Tasting places

Most of New-Zealand cellar doors welcome visitors not only for a wine discovery but also for a relaxing time.

The tasting room looks more like a café, with a large choice of wines but also warm and cold drinks.

The park becomes a playground with petanque and giant chessboards… the objective is to help the visitor feel at home and stay, for a tasting, a lunch or just for a good time.

Some of these warm-welcoming wineries do organize events also, such as a concert or a giant picnic for the wine amateurs. Here is another way to seduce the consumer and create nice memories.

Recruiting, evangelizing and educating people can be done through the winery and the cellar door, too. At Sileni Estate, the cellar door becomes an Epicurean Centre and offers the visitor a "total wine and food experience": to taste or to have lunch at the restaurant, but also shop at the gourmet store with fine products and cheeses, and even to learn how to cook at the culinary school!

Apart from the wineries cellar doors, other places do play an important role in education, evangelisation and acquisition around wine.

The Bar-Bistrot Rouge in Wellington is one of these places, and manages very well its objective to welcome consumers around a glass of wine. Rouge has a unique approach: wine is explained with simple words, and are not classified by region or grape variety but through styles: "dizzy bubbles", demure whites", "delicate whites", "blushing pinks & soft reds", sophisticated reds", "ravishing reds"...

Rouge is a warm and cosy place proposing a simple and different approach to wine, explaining it and helping the consumer to choose, while waiters offer a discrete and very professional help. Wine can be chosen on the everyday list, the Rouge Selection, with unpretentious and accessible cuvees. For more choice, the Rouge Collection is almost a bible, more representative and more comprehensive, and explains each cuvee and region.

www.rouge.net.nz