The Old and the New World of Wine: Rethinking Enogastronomic Tourism from Contextual Factors

Abstract

Research in wine tourism highlights synergies between wine and gastronomy as a marketing strategy for the territory. However, how enogastronomic tourism materializes shows different characteristics according to contextual factors. This article aims to problematize enogastronomic tourism from the perspective of its territorial, economic, and sociocultural impacts in rural areas through an inductive method. For this, a comparative case study was carried out between two oenological regions of Mexico and Spain, where tourism associated with wine and local gastronomy is one of the most important economic activities. In both cases, the results show the existence of two different models of food and wine tourism that are related to contextual factors such as the economic, historical, and cultural conditions of the regions studied, the specific demands of leisure tourism in late capitalism, socioeconomic relations between wine and gastronomy, and cooperation among stakeholders. The results obtained allow discussing the different paths of enogastronomic tourism in the regions of the new and the old world of wine as expressions of territorial innovation or historical continuity, which serve as support to build the specificity of the wine routes concerning the characteristics from different contexts.