A Thoughtful Consideration of the Sheer Hellscape that is Wine Tourism

Wherein the problems are outlined and the solutions are implied

“But the reality is that we’ve reached a point where the only way to reduce climate change is to travel less, travel locally, and travel radically differently.”

Thus concludes Vinka Woldarsky in a thoughtful essay in Pellicle concerning the history, consequences, and unfairness of wine tourism. It bears noting that as Ms. Woldarsky takes the reader on a first-person tour of wine tourism from Napa to Madrid, we don’t get a recipe for what should be the response (if at all there should be one) for when winery after winery and restaurant after restaurant and job after job is displaced with nothing in the wake of taking her advice to travel less, travel locally and travel “radically differently”.

Woldarsky starts in Napa, which she correctly notes is the very model for a successful wine country destination. We learn that upon her first visit, she quickly decided the place wasn’t for her. This was not due to the quality of the wines or even, apparently, the geography, but it was due to the fact that “I couldn’t afford many things in Napa, let alone the rest of the valley. The restaurants, tasting rooms, winery visits, and wines were all out of my reach.”