Pandemic changes wine-tasting experience
The usual busy summer season for Okanagan winery tasting rooms is just around the corner.
But even with public health restrictions eased months or years ago, the numbers of happy visitors swirling and sipping and spitting their way around the Okanagan hasn’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, said Wine Growers British Columbia president and CEO Miles Prodan.
“We didn’t see the recovery in winery visits we hoped to see last summer. Everyone was anticipating a bit stronger of a recovery, but talking to wineries, we just haven’t seen that,” said Prodan.
B.C.’s wine industry is accustomed to success, especially wine-related tourism. Figures show that B.C. wine tourism grew at almost twice the rate of overall tourism in the province from 2015 to 2019.
But COVID-19 hit the industry hard, especially with travel bans. A 2022 study of the Canadian wine industry showed that the pandemic resulted in big drops in total economic impact, number of jobs supported and wages paid and the amount of federal and provincial taxes paid.
However, COVID-19’s big shock was to wine tourism: across the country, pandemicrelated travel bans meant that, country-wide, wine tourism reached only 43.2 per cent of its 2019 economic impact in 2020. Okanagan wineries felt that drop too, said Prodan.
To bring visitors back, Wine Growers British Columbia has applied to the provincial government to get additional dollars for marketing campaigns aimed at bringing local and regional wine lovers back to Okanagan wineries.
“We need to focus on the great relationship B.C. wineries have with our short-haul markets,” he said. “Last year, anecdotally, looking at the vehicles in the parking lots at the wineries, we just didn’t see those Alberta plates the way we used to before the pandemic.”
As for what individual wineries can do to bring back tasters, Prodan noted that wineries which offered membership in wine clubs was a lifeline during the pandemic. Combined with the reservation systems that the pandemic forced on wineries to keep numbers of people down in the tasting rooms, a new kind of relationship now exists between wineries and visiting grape aficionados.
“Tasting wine for many people has become more of a bespoke experience, rather than what we used to call splash-and-dash. There are fewer visitors, but they’re lingering for longer periods of time, sitting down and learning the wines, enjoying the wines and taking home larger numbers of bottles because they’ve had a full and enjoyable experience at the winery.”
Gordon Fitzpatrick, president at Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards near Peachland, echoed Prodan’s comments.
“Overall we have still not regained our prepandemic visitation. I thought we would bounce back more from 2021, but there were a number of challenges, including a very wet and cool spring, high gas prices which may have affected travel to the region, and we also noticed that hotels, with their staffing challenges, had some high room rates,” said Fitzpatrick.
Visits to his winery are down, but the tasting experience has changed for the better, said Fitzpatrick, who is also past chair of Wine Growers British Columbia. Revenues were up about seven per cent from 2021 because an enhanced tasting experience means fewer customers are spending more time, and more money, at the winery.
“Our tasting numbers haven’t recovered but our revenues have, and we have seen a notable lift in the value of transactions,” said Fitzpatrick. The pandemic drove some positive changes to experience for visitors to his winery, including a reservation system that means tasters are no longer standing three deep at the tasting bar.
Instead, he said visitors have a slower, deeper tasting experience, with personalized service, often seated outside with views of the lake.
Fitzpatrck also noted that the provincial Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch’s temporary expanded service area program, part of the government’s response to the pandemic, allowed wineries to use their facilities more fully and to provide a more intimate experience. B.C.’s wine industry is lobbying to make that program permanent, he said.
As for future returns to pre-pandemic levels of visitation, Fitzpatrick said predicting when that will happen isn’t possible, and Okanagan wineries will need to continue to adapt. “For any winery, you want to make sure you diversify and have as many options for distribution as possible.”