This is typically a quiet day in the wine tour industry. First of all most fathers would rather spend their days with their kids than off tasting wine. Also, among tour guides a very high percentage are fathers, we are expected to drive like adults. One of my favorite contributions is in the window of Woodhouse Chocolate in St. Helena. It is the Dad’s workshop with all of its tools in chocolate, a chocolate log being sawed by a chocolate saw, channel locks, screw drivers and even some chocolate cigars.
One of the ways that Napa and Sonoma became such a huge destination was thanks to the San Francisco convention industry. Part of a conference is a daytrip to wine country and it was a chance to leave the kids in the city and enjoy some adult time. Since 60% of visitors return that idea of an adult paradise lives in the back of many people’s minds.
Well, now many of those kids are grown up and they learned about fine wines at the dining room table. A trip to wine country has evolved into a family vacation, and even parents of younger children have to come to think of wine country as their place away. So, we still don’t see many young children at the wineries, but increasingly the larger wineries are adapting in small ways.
I think that the part wine country that appeals to the father in me is the efforts we make for the future and those generations. From the time you plant the vines until you pour that first glass of wine may be seven years. Everything is planned for the long term, vineyards, buildings and caves. Within a family we all have our time sense, children live moment by moment and then day to day, mothers live month to month and fathers year to year.
That’s why wines appeal so much to men; it’s all about the vintage, the year the grapes were grown. Seeing the vines in the fields, the wineries nestled in the hills and the barrels aging in the caves supports that sense of fatherhood and protection. Besides, wine is one of the proofs that you can get better with age.
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