From grape picking to brand building: harvest experiences as a driver of wine tourism

©Calice Hospitality and Wines

The grape harvest season is in full swing, and vineyards all over France are buzzing with life. In recent years, though, the rows of vines have welcomed not only seasonal workers but also visitors eager to take part. Harvest experiences have quickly become a flagship of wine tourism. Spending just a few hours in the vineyard allows travelers to witness a defining moment in the winemaking cycle and to grasp its deep human and cultural meaning.

For wineries, it’s far more than a novelty: it’s a powerful lever for storytelling, brand visibility, diversification, and customer loyalty.

A legal framework now clear and encouraged

For a long time, harvest experiences operated in a legal gray area: were they a form of illegal volunteering, or disguised labor? Since 2022, the rules have been clarified: these activities are officially recognized as wine tourism services in their own right. They must therefore be designed as a commercial product, billed just like a cellar tour or a tasting.

To remain compliant, wineries must:

• Register the activity as part of their commercial offer and include it in their accounting.

• Charge participants for the experience, which should cover not only the symbolic grape picking but also the additional services (tastings, meals, events).

• Ensure safety by providing the proper equipment and clear instructions.

• Be insured, with liability coverage extended to include visitors in the vineyard.

• Supervise the experience so that it remains educational and friendly, by limiting the cutting time to make it a moment of discovery, without replacing the work of seasonal workers.

This clarification, the outcome of several years of dialogue with professionals and the MSA, was reaffirmed and reinforced in the new national wine tourism roadmap published last June. In this framework, the State highlights harvest experiences as a flagship product, capable of boosting the appeal of French vineyards for visitors in search of authenticity.

Significant experiences and what they demonstrate

Tourist harvests are not just about snipping a few bunches of grapes. The most compelling initiatives show that success lies in crafting a complete journey, one that gives real meaning to the experience while serving a clear strategic purpose for the estate:

• In Alsace, Domaine Specht in Mittelwihr has created a full-day experience that combines harvest time, an Alsatian meal, and a tasting. This type of experience attracts a family and regional clientele seeking conviviality and authenticity. For the estate, the benefits are clear: generating daytime traffic, extending the tourist season, and pairing wine with local gastronomy.

• In Burgundy, Château de Pommard offers a participatory harvest followed by a tasting of prestigious vintages. In this case, the choice is clear: it's aimed at an international clientele in search of excellence. The experience becomes a loss leader that reinforces the estate's premium image and leads to direct sales with high added value.

• In Bordeaux, the Château Monconseil-Gazin offers a “Live my life as a winemaker” day, which combines picking, a gourmet lunch and a tour of the winery, with a positioning accessible to adults and children! This offer shows how a Bordeaux château can open its harvests to a novice public and transform discovery into a vector of proximity and loyalty.

These examples show that tourist harvests can meet very different objectives: filling the mid-season, asserting a high-end image or building loyalty among local customers . It is this capacity for adaptation that makes it a flagship product of wine tourism today.

Increased attractiveness off-season

From an economic point of view, the direct impact of tourist harvests remains limited: welcoming a few visitors for a day of harvesting does not upset the financial balance of a winery's wine tourism center. But their added value lies elsewhere . These experiences create a peak of attractiveness at a strategic moment, in September and October, when the summer season slows down. They thus make it possible to extend tourist attendance , provide content for tourist offices and maintain activity in partner accommodation and restaurants. For wine-growing regions, this is a real advantage for deseasonalization, which reinforces the visibility of the late season.

A powerful marketing tool

Beyond the economic aspect, the true value of tourist harvests lies in their marketing power. Each participant becomes a content creator: photos of freshly cut grapes, videos in the vineyards, Instagram stories of the friendly break or shared meal. These spontaneous publications fuel particularly effective digital word-of-mouth, because they are perceived as authentic and embodied.

It's also an opportunity for the estate to structure its communication around a key moment of the year . The harvest offers an ideal calendar: it extends the momentum of summer, enlivens the start of the school year and creates a bridge to the announcement of new vintages. The highly visual harvest images become a powerful medium for feeding newsletters, social networks and press relations.

The experience also allows us to highlight the wines already available , by creating a direct link between the vine and the bottle. The visitor who discovers the grapes at the time of their harvest becomes a privileged witness to the birth of the wine. Storytelling then takes on another dimension: the tasting is no longer limited to a label or a technical sheet, it is accompanied by a personal memory. We no longer just taste a vintage, we remember having picked the bunches that compose it.

Finally, tourist harvests are an excellent pretext for collecting qualified contacts (newsletter subscription, club membership, participation in other events). They open the way to an ongoing relationship, where the estate can transform a one-off experience into lasting loyalty .

A collective dynamic in the making

Some destinations are beginning to lead the way. In Beaune, the BEAUNE AND PAYS BEAUNOIS TOURIST OFFICE has chosen to centralize a tourist harvest offering : several partner estates offer mornings of picking, followed by tastings and sometimes meals, with coordinated bookings. This model illustrates how a region can go beyond isolated initiatives to offer a truly collective gateway to visitors. In Alsace, the Independent Winegrowers of Alsace launched the "Harvest Harvester for a Day" initiative, supported by several tourist offices. Here again, the approach is structured, giving visibility to a shared offering on a regional scale. These initiatives, still rare in France, demonstrate how territorial coordination could strengthen the visibility and attractiveness of tourist harvests by pooling communication and broadening the impact for the benefit of an entire destination.

Abroad, some wine regions have made the grape harvest a highlight of their appeal. In Napa Valley , California, the harvests from August to October give rise to a multitude of events: participatory harvests, immersive workshops, meals in the cellars, festive "grape stomping"... These offers, often premium, are coordinated at the valley level and contribute to making the harvest time a real seasonal tourist event . The comparison is enlightening: while France still leaves individual initiative to the estates, other wine destinations have succeeded in transforming the harvest into a collective and premium experience, supported by an entire territory.

The experience that reconnects the vineyard with its public

If tourist harvests are so appealing, it is because they deliver what so few experiences still can: a true moment, rooted in nature and in an ancestral gesture. Visitors do not come for entertainment, they come to cut grapes, breathe in the scent of the vines, share the joyful fatigue of harvest, and sit down to the conviviality of a harvest meal. They come to reconnect with a world that too often slips away.

This is precisely where their strategic strength lies. By opening their vineyards to the public, estates do not just showcase a profession. They anchor their image in authenticity, give deeper meaning to their wines, and create memories that last. In a market saturated with discourse and labels, this kind of immersion becomes a powerful differentiator.

And the impact goes well beyond the individual. At a territorial scale, tourist harvests extend the season, draw in new audiences, and offer an ideal stage to address climate challenges and future choices. They turn a time of labor into a moment of collective transmission.

The tourist harvest is not a novelty or a sideshow. It is a story, a ritual, a way of showing that wine is not just a beverage, but a living, shared heritage at the heart of our countryside.