MASTER THESIS Vinedo de los Vientos : A family winery in Uruguay, the next New World of wine Léna Thivin Internship at Vinedo de los Vientos Atlántida, Uruguay Professional Supervisor: Mariana Cerutti - Academic Supervisor: Pierre-Louis Teissedre Université de Bordeaux - ISVV June 2019 Abstract The following Master Thesis is dedicated to the work and the tourism project implemented in the winery of Viñedo de los Vientos in Atlántida, Uruguay. As a lot of small size winery, opening the doors and developing the tourism activity is an important opportunity. Due to a lot of micro and macro-economic factors studied during the research, this family winery has a very good potential to create a continuous tourism offer in order to increase his on-site sales and brand awareness. Some basic organization is needed as well as the establishment of a strategy to do so. Uruguay is composed at 90% of family wineries that try to compete between each other to be the most competitive ones. This country is also quite new in this sector and represent a very small territory and market share in front of important wine countries as the New World representors: Argentina and Chile. Uruguay needs to improve its notoriety to become known and competitive on the world wine market. The goal, in this bodega, is to develop a proper basic offer and insure a steady standard of offer. In a second time, the goal is to communicate and improve the visibility of the brand and the winery in the national tourism sectors. According to these two main aspects, a plan in 3 categories is implemented during the 3 months contract of the internship focusing on the improvement of the current situation at a basic level, the communication and the differentiation. This project, on the longer term, include the recruitment of a new employee to receive the visitors and keep on working for the promotion of the winery after the internship is over. This 3 steps plan proposal has the aim to improve the viability of this family winery by increasing the direct sales and the recognition of the establishment as an active tourism actor. Keywords: Company; Standard offer; Communication plan; Brand awareness; Differentiation Abbreviations ATEU: Asociación de Turismo Enológico del Uruguay, also named Los Caminos del Vino it is the association of family wineries of Uruguay INAVI: Instituto Nacional de la Vitivinicultura MINTUR: Ministry of Tourism of Uruguay SWOT: Analysis based on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats USD: United States Dollars UYU: Uruguayan Pesos Table of contents I. Introduction 1 A. Presentation of Bodega Viñedo de los Vientos 1 B. Duties during the internship 2 1. Hosting visitors: tours, tastings and events 2 2. Development of the infrastructure and the offer 3 3. Implementation of a communication strategy 4 II. Methodological approach 4 A. Analysis of the situation 5 1. First approach 5 2. First disadvantages 5 3. Analysis of the customers 6 4. Analysis of the market 7 B. SWOT analysis 8 C. Objectives 10 D. Development plan in 3 levels 11 1. Insure a standard quality offer 11 2. Communication and partnership 13 3. Advanced plan and differentiation 15 III. Results and discussion 17 A. Results and improvement tendency 17 B. Discussion, limitations and nuances 23 Conclusion 25 Acknowledgment 28 Bibliography 29 Annexes 30 Annex 1 - New tasting menu Annex 2 - Maps of Canelones wineries, Ruta 5 and location of Vinedo de los Vientos Annex 3 - Tasting options designs Annex 4 - Cooking class offer Annex 5 - Pictures of the wine tiny house Annex 6 - Database abstract - April 2019 I. Introduction In the wine sector, the opposition between the Old World and the New World gives interesting and competitive trend to the market. But what about the countries that are so small and unknown that they are not even part of these two categories. Which wine tourists knew that they could visit and taste very good fine wines in Canada, Brazil and even... Uruguay? “Uruguay is the best-kept wine secrets of South America.” said Amanda Barnes, writer and creator of the website Around The World in 80 Harvests. Influenced by an important migration wave from Italy, Uruguay became the fourth wine producers of South America. In the past two decades, the wineries of this very small country, trying to compete with giant like Argentina and Chile, are opening their doors to visitors in order to increase their visibility and sales. In Uruguay, 90% of the 270 wineries are family owned. This is the case of Viñedo de los Vientos, the winery chosen to elaborate this Master thesis project. This first part is a contextualization and presentation of the internship and the oenotourism project implemented. We start with a description of the winery followed by the main tasks executed during the internship and then the idea of the proposal as the realization of the project. A. Presentation of Bodega Viñedo de los Vientos Viñedo de los Vientos is a family winery own and run by Pablo Fallabrino and Mariana Cerutti. Pablo inherits the vineyard from his grandfather in 1995 and started the production of wine in 1998. Nowadays, he is still the winemaker and work with the help of 4 permanent workers in the vineyard and the winery. His wife, Mariana, is in charge of the administration, commercial part, and tourism activity. In a matter of trade, the production of wine is mostly exported to Brazil and the United States and the national distribution is selected to just a few specific restaurant and shops. Ten different wines are produced here, mostly red wines, but also two white wines and one dessert wine. Among the red wines stand the first natural wine of the country: Anarkia, 100% Tannat. The philosophy applied in the vineyard and in the winery is the minimal intervention. As a lot of Uruguayan family, Pablo has Italian origin and more specifically from Piedmont region. For this reason, the vineyard, that represents around 15 hectares, has an important Italian influence with varieties like Arneis, Nebbiolo and Barbera. These varieties are pretty rare in the region and in South America. This varieties added to Pablo’s winemaking style, its wine are characterized as different and even “hard to sell” according to Patricio, owner of Boca Negra, one of the two wine bar in Montevideo. 1 Geography-wise, the winery is located in Atlántida, a coastal town, east of Montevideo, where meet the River de la Plata estuary and the Atlantic Ocean. This proximity with the water provides a pretty humid and very windy climate. Atlántida is part of the region of Canelones. This region surrounds the capital city of Montevideo and is the biggest wine region of the country in terms of number of wineries. In fact, 70% of the wineries of Uruguay are located in Canelones. At Vinedo de los Vientos, the very first tourism activity started in 2001 but really grew with the creation of ATEU in 2004. ATEU is an association formed by the family wineries open to tourism in Uruguay. Nowadays, the association counts 18 wineries and has the aim to gather the strengths and work together to develop the wine tourism sector for each winery and promote themselves as a group. On the 18th of February, when the internship starts, the tourism offer is pretty similar to the other Uruguayan wineries: a 5 wine tastings with cheese platter or empanadas ($35 USD) or antipasto ($55 USD), a 3 course lunch with 5 wines pairing ($75 USD) or a 4 courses lunch ($94 USD) with the wines too. All these options include a tour in the vineyard and in the winery. As the company is managed by only two people who are also in charge of other parts of the business, the doors are not always open and the visits are available with pre-booking only. B. Duties during the internship As it is said in the previous part of the introduction, only two people are running the business and in charge of everything. We are in a very small size family company which means multitask for everyone and adaptability. The very first duty is to be present and available every day and the main activities were divided in three categories: doing the visits and tastings to the visitors, developing and improving the current offer and infrastructure and rethink and implement a better strategy to increase visibility of the winery as a tourism product. 1. Hosting visitors: tours, tastings and events The main task of the intern was to host the tourists, to lead the visits in the vineyard and in the winery followed by the tasting. The first goal of the internship was to open the doors to the visitors every day of the week, without necessarily a booking. The primary activity, with the other intern, Nuno R Silva (Wintour intern at the winery as well), was to be here to receive and welcome any visitors no matter the language or if they have a booking or not. Regarding this, it had to be ensure that the place was clean and set, the wines always ready for eventual tastings, the outside space nicely arranged and the shop organized. Two 2 things are important in the shop: the regulation of the wine stock and the availability of money change in the different currencies. To host visitors in such a small winery also include cooking and waitressing for the lunches for example. At the beginning of this new tourism development, the idea of the visit is also to promote this new offer and make sure the visitors would be ambassadors of the company.