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The purpose of this paper is to use the experiential view of consumption to better understand the nature of the motivations of the wine tourist in a congested wine region environment. It also aims to determine the impact of travel antecedents such as the perceived characteristics of the wine region, information sources utilised, and previous knowledge of the region and its products on the destination decision‐making process and ultimately the visitation motivations.

Information is obtained from a random sample of 304 respondents from 12 wineries representing all size groups situated on the Paarl Wine Route (PWR) in South Africa. Data are collected through the use of a self‐administered, highly structured questionnaire, self‐completed by respondents at each of the winery cellar door venues.

The most important characteristic of the entire winescape is the region's scenic beauty. Other high impact characteristics are the friendly people and their hospitality, overall ambience and the diversity of wine estates. These factors point to hedonic behaviour in a highly social context and primarily a search for enjoyment/pleasure, mainly by first‐time visitors. The dynamic of first‐time and repeat visitation plays a key role in visitors' wine tourism behaviour. The decision to engage in wine tourism is generally impulsive, even spurious, the visit duration short and the motivations guiding the visitors' behaviour predominantly hedonic in nature.

The impact of the natural landscape underlines the premise that an experiential research approach can yield valuable insights and sheds new light on the fact that a memorable experience for a wine tourist does not only evolve inside the winery's cellar door. In the process it exposits what could be unique selling points for marketing differently positioned wine regions.

This study is of value to academic researchers, travel and accommodation providers and wine industry practitioners alike as it highlights important aspects of wine tourism behaviour with regard to the actual (underlying) motivations that drive them to visit cellar doors in a wine region.

The purpose of this paper is to discern the intra‐regional visitation patterns of wine tourists. Exploratory research was conducted in two branded wine regions, to conceptualise the spatial movement of wine tourists in a theoretical construct.

Information was obtained from a random sample of 214 visitors to 25 wineries in two branded wine regions in South Australia. Data were collected by means of face‐to‐face interviews using a highly structured questionnaire at each of the winery cellar door venues.

A conceptual theory regarding winery visitation sets (VSs) was developed. Discernable spatial visitation patterns to wineries result from the dynamic interaction of visitors’ needs and the incumbent winery profiles that exist in a hierarchy within a wine region. The grouping of sequentially visited wineries in the three‐tier hierarchy form specific VSs of wineries. Winery profiles are initially determined by visitation incidence: the most visited Regional Centre Point (RCP) winery is followed by sequentially less visited regional profile (RP) wineries and a third tier of regional attribute (RA) wineries. Visitation pattern trends are identifiable and differ between first‐time and repeat visitors.

It is possible to detail the market segmentation of wine tourists quite accurately in terms of their psychographics and demographics and favoured visitation patterns within the branded wine region. This will also provide important insights into the balance of winery and cellar door roles in the region and confirm the “optimal” number of wineries required to fulfil the needs of the ever‐increasing numbers of wine tourists.

This paper is of value to academic researchers, wine industry practitioners and travel and accommodation providers alike as it provides the foundation for a conceptual theory to explain the discernable intra‐regional visitation patterns of wine tourists to the cellar doors of wineries.

This study aims to identify and validate the different clusters of wine consumers in India based on the wine-related lifestyle (WRL) instrument. It also investigates how the identified clusters differ in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, income, education, employment and marital status.

The authors conducted a survey using a structured questionnaire to collect data from wine consumers in India. The number of participants totalled to 432. The authors first identified the clusters using latent profile analysis. The authors then used the decision tree analysis based on a recursive partitioning algorithm to validate the clusters. Finally, the authors analysed the relationship between the identified clusters and socio-demographic characteristics using correspondence analysis.

Three distinct segments emerged after data were subjected to latent profile analysis, namely, curious, ritualistic and casual. The authors found that the curious cluster had a high mean score for situational and social consumption while the ritualistic cluster had a high mean for ritualistic consumption. The findings also suggest that the casual cluster had more female wine consumers.

This study makes methodological contributions to the wine consumer segmentation approach. First, it adopts a latent profile analysis to profile Indian wine consumers. Second, it validates the obtained clusters using the decision tree analysis method. Third, it analyses the relationship between the identified clusters and socio-demographic variables using correspondence analysis, a technique far superior to the Chi-square methods.