Across many of the world’s leading wine regions, a familiar pattern is emerging: domestic wine consumption is softening, while wine tourism is growing stronger. New Zealand is a clear example of this trend in action — and Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand’s only Great Wine Capital, is arguably leading the response. How the region is navigating this shift offers a compelling model for wine destinations around the world.
New Zealand’s domestic wine sales have fallen to 40 million litres annually (NZ Winegrowers Annual Report 2025) the lowest level in three decades. Yet in the same period, wine tourism is performing better than at any point in recent memory. More international visitors are arriving, more are visiting wineries, and those who do are spending significantly more than other travellers. Understanding this divergence points clearly toward where the opportunity lies for wine regions navigating a more complex market environment.
The Experience Economy Comes to the Cellar Door
The trend will be familiar to wine regions across the Great Wine Capitals network: visitors are moving away from casual drop-in tastings and toward pre-booked, premium, immersive experiences. In New Zealand, this shift has been given structural support by the 2024 cellar door law changes, which gave operators greater flexibility to design curated visitor programmes around their wine.
At its heart, this reflects a broader evolution in how consumers, particularly those with discretionary income, choose to spend. People are drinking a little less, but drinking better and more intentionally. The wine tourist of 2026 is not necessarily a dedicated collector. They are an experience-seeking traveller who wants a genuine connection: to the land, to the people, to the story behind the wine. They want to meet the winemaker, understand the place they are standing in, and enjoy a meal that could only exist in that particular landscape. And they are prepared to pay meaningfully for that depth.
The commercial case for investing in this kind of experience is compelling. Wine tourism generates not just immediate cellar door revenue, but durable longer-term outcomes: direct-to-consumer relationships sustained through wine clubs and online sales, brand advocacy carried into international markets by visitors who become loyal customers, and export demand built through memorable on-the-ground experiences.
Great Wine Capital Hawke’s Bay Ambassador and co-owner of Black Barn Vineyard, Hawke’s Bay, Kim Thorp, was recently interviewed by Radio New Zealand (RNZ) on this trend and said: “That consumption, though, is increasingly not about bulk consumption. It is about a real appreciation of the wine, what’s in the bottle, but also where it’s from and how it’s made.”
This is not an abstract observation for Hawke’s Bay, it is something being witnessed at the cellar door in real time. Thorp, noted that over the 2025–26 summer at Black Barn, the vineyard saw a tangible increase in international visitors arriving not just to taste wine, but wanting to understand each wine they tried, its provenance, its story, its place. That curiosity is the engine powering wine tourism growth in the region.
Four Trends Shaping Wine Tourism in New Zealand
1. The rise of premium, pre-booked experiences. The walk-in tasting is giving way to curated, bookable experiences, and operators investing in this model are seeing results. In Hawke’s Bay, Craggy Range Winery’s integrated hospitality model of luxury accommodation, fine dining, and cellar door was recognised with the 2025 GWC Global Best of Wine Tourism Award, demonstrating what the premium end of wine tourism looks like when executed well.
2. Active tourism and the cycle trail visitor. Slow, active travel through wine country is growing strongly. Hawke’s Bay has one of New Zealand’s most developed cycling networks, connecting urban areas directly to wine country, a model of infrastructure-led wine tourism development that has attracted significant national government investment.
3. Sustainability as visitor experience. New Zealand’s wine industry carries a significant sustainability advantage, underpinned by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ), a 30-year-old, independently audited certification programme operating across more than 100 export markets. For wine tourists, sustainability is increasingly something to witness and participate in, not just be told about. In Hawke’s Bay, this story is deepened by the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga, guardianship of the land, which resonates strongly with conscious international travellers.
4. Food and wine as an integrated regional offer. The strongest wine tourism destinations understand that visitors who come for the wine stay for the food. Hawke’s Bay’s rich food culture, expressed through its farmers’ markets, and artisan producers, exemplifies the kind of integrated hospitality ecosystem that consistently outperforms cellar doors operating in isolation.
Thorp, speaking on RNZ in February 2026, put the challenge to the industry plainly: the question is whether the current shifts in consumption represent a temporary blip or a long-term structural change. His view, and the direction Hawke’s Bay has already taken, is that the answer requires action either way.
Hawke’s Bay is backing that belief, and building the infrastructure, the experiences, and the storytelling to match. The results, so far, suggest the direction is right.