Environmental Sustainability and Tourism—The Importance of Organic Wine Production for Wine Tourism in Germany

Abstract

Sustainable aspects of wine tourism have become very important in recent years. The environmental sustainability of wineries, in the form of organic certification, is not a direct component of wine tourism but can nevertheless play a significant role in visiting a winery. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 32 wineries from 10 different German wine growing regions were conducted to analyze the tourism appeal, the importance of organic certification, and the future development of organic wine tourism from the producers’ points of view. The results show that there is certain evidence for using organic certification as a unique selling point, but it appears that wineries are not fully exploiting these possibilities. This study could help organic wineries to get a transparent picture of the current situation in terms of relevance and to break down communication barriers in order to establish contact with potential visitors to the winery.