When you hear the words wine trail, it’s easy to picture a map, a scenic drive and a handful of wineries waiting at stops along the way.
But a successful wine trail can be much more than a route between tasting rooms.
It can become a tourism organization. A marketing partnership. An event producer. A connection between wineries and neighboring businesses. And, over time, it can help an entire region tell its story and give visitors more reasons to come, stay and return.
As we take on the work of building a rural wine trail here in Southern Oregon, we’ve been asking an important question:
What does it take to build a wine trail that lasts?
That question has taken our research far beyond the Illinois Valley.
Learning From Wine Trails Across the Country
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been studying established wine trails and wine associations around the United States, particularly those serving rural areas and smaller communities.
We want to understand what happens behind the scenes.
How are these organizations structured? Who handles their day-to-day work? How are they funded? What do member wineries contribute? How do trail events work financially? What role do tourism organizations and neighboring businesses play? And how have those answers changed as the organizations have matured?
We’ve studied trails of different sizes and different organizational models because the goal isn’t to find one organization that looks exactly like the Illinois Valley Wine Trail.
We’re looking for pieces that work.
And there’s only so much a website, annual report or event calendar can tell you.
So we’ve started asking the people who actually do the work.
Taking the Research One Step Further
Our outreach and research have included organizations such as the Hermann Wine Trail in Missouri, Keuka Lake Wine Trail and Seneca Lake Wine Trail in New York, and Bucks County Wine Trail in Pennsylvania, along with conversations and research closer to home here in Southern Oregon, specifically the Applegate Valley Wine Country.
We’re asking practical questions:
- How did your wine trail begin?
- How is the organization governed?
- Who handles marketing, administration and day-to-day operations?
- How is that work funded?
- What do participating wineries pay or contribute?
- For trail events, who provides the wine and food, and who pays for it?
- How important are ticketed events, passports, sponsorships or membership dues to the budget?
- How do you work with tourism organizations and other local businesses?
- How has your model changed as the trail has grown?
- What has been most valuable to your wineries and your community?
- And what do you wish you had known when you started?
Some of the most useful lessons may come from what worked.
Others may come from what didn’t.
Both matter when you’re building something new.
Why Those Lessons Matter in the Illinois Valley
The Illinois Valley has its own geography, economy, opportunities and challenges.
Our wineries are spread across a rural landscape. We don’t have a large city sitting in the center of the Trail. Visitors coming here are making an intentional trip into the Valley.
That changes the conversation.
We don’t want to think only about getting someone through the door of a tasting room.
We want to think about the whole visit.
Where will they stay?
Where will they eat?
What else will they discover while they’re here?
Can a winery visit introduce someone to a local restaurant, lodging property, shop, artist, outdoor experience or community event?
Can we give someone enough to experience that they decide to stay another night?
And, perhaps most importantly, what will make them want to come back?
Those questions are part of why the Illinois Valley Wine Trail was created.
Wine may be what first catches someone’s attention.
But the destination we’re inviting them to discover is much larger.
From Four Wineries to a Destination
There are currently four wineries at the heart of the Illinois Valley Wine Trail: Augustino Estate & Vineyard, Bridgeview Vineyards, Deer Creek Vineyards and Foris Vineyards.
Each has its own story, wines, setting and personality.
One of IVWT’s jobs is to help connect those individual experiences into something larger.
That means building relationships beyond the wineries themselves.
Lodging. Restaurants. Recreation. Shopping. Arts and culture. Community organizations. Tourism agencies. Local events.
The stronger those connections become, the easier it becomes for a visitor to see the Illinois Valley not simply as a place with several wineries, but as a wine destination worth exploring.
And that brings us to an even bigger piece of our research.
What Happens When a Wine Region Organizes?
As we began studying other wine trails, another question kept surfacing:
What happens when a rural area goes from simply having wineries to having an organized wine trail or wine association actively promoting the region?
We’re now digging into research on the economic and tourism impact of wine trails and wine associations.
We want to understand what organized wine tourism can mean for visitor spending, overnight stays, restaurants and retailers, local events, regional identity and rural economic development.
In other words, we’re looking beyond what a wine trail can do for wineries.
We’re asking what a strong wine trail can potentially do for a community.
That distinction matters.
We Don’t Need to Reinvent Every Wheel
The Illinois Valley isn’t Hermann.
It isn’t Keuka Lake, Seneca Lake or Bucks County.
It isn’t even another Southern Oregon wine region.
And we don’t want it to be.
The purpose of this research isn’t to copy somebody else’s blueprint and change the name at the top.
It’s to learn.
If another organization has already discovered a smart way to structure an event, support its member wineries, work with tourism partners or create sustainable revenue, we want to understand it.
If someone tried something that didn’t work, we’d like to understand that too.
If a trail has been operating for decades, we want to know what allowed it to survive changes in leadership, wineries, tourism trends and the economy.
Then we can bring those lessons home and ask the question that matters most:
Does this make sense for the Illinois Valley?
Building for More Than Next Year
The Illinois Valley Wine Trail is young.
That’s not a disadvantage.
Right now, we have an opportunity to be thoughtful about what we build before traditions, systems and expectations become difficult to change.
Our goal isn’t simply to create more events or sell more Passports.
It’s to build an organization that supports our wineries, strengthens tourism, creates opportunities for neighboring businesses, helps tell the story of the Illinois Valley and gives visitors compelling reasons to spend more time here.
And we want to build something capable of continuing that work for years to come.
So we’re asking questions.
We’re looking at data.
We’re talking to people who have done this work before us.
We’re paying attention to both successes and mistakes.
And we’ll be sharing some of what we learn along the way through Building the Trail, an ongoing look behind the scenes at how the Illinois Valley Wine Trail is growing from an idea into a lasting regional organization.
We aren’t looking for another wine trail to become.
We’re learning from many of them so we can build the right one for the Illinois Valley.
Wine is the invitation. The Illinois Valley is the experience. 🍷🌲
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