Wineries turning up the heat on tourism ventures

What goes with Tasmanian riesling? Fly-fishing lessons. What should you have with McLaren Vale shiraz? A biplane flight. Do a fabled estate's wines taste better when they come with a private tour of its cellars?

Cellar doors seeking to stand out from the crowd are ramping up the add-ons, packaging tasting sessions with activities that may – or may not – relate directly to wine. What they have in common is learning something new.

The push to provide visitors with a hands-on experience means you're increasingly likely to leave a cellar door with a new skill as well as a stash of bottles. That might be fly fishing, if you've been to Josef Chromy in Tasmania, or wine blending if you go for the blending-and-biplane package at South Australia's d'Arenberg. At the very least, you'll walk away understanding more about wine than when you walked in.

"Educational activities, such as learning about the process of winemaking and wine-tasting masterclasses - and unique offerings at wineries which involve hands-on interaction - are proving very popular," says Sally Cope, executive officer at Ultimate Winery Experiences.

Cope's organisation was set up in 2013 by Tourism Australia to promote premium wine tourism. With winery restaurants and local food becoming more or less a given, she says activities such as cooking classes and wine blending sessions are in demand.

Even the traditional cellar-door tasting model, where visitors stand at a counter and hold out their glasses, is undergoing a makeover. Wine tasting is no longer simply that; the words on every winery marketer's lips are "education" and "customised experiences".

Just outside Adelaide, Penfolds has just unveiled its multi-million dollar refurbishment of historic Magill Estate, the "spiritual home" of Grange. The rebuild includes a new cellar door with open-plan and private spaces "dedicated to wine education".

Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago says the traditional tasting bar is "absolutely still a feature" but "the addition of private tasting rooms built into the walls of the original winery offers tailor-made tasting experiences." Visitors can venture into the back-vintage room, dabble in the Yattarna room or experiment in the "bins" room.

Hosted tours extend beyond the cellar door, providing access to cellars above and below the ground and unveiling the original hiding spot of Max Schubert's "hidden" three vintages of Grange. Penfolds is no newcomer to the business of interactive education. Its long-standing recorking clinics are open to owners of bottles aged 15 and over; and at Penfolds' Barossa cellar door in Nuriootpa, visitors can create their own blends from grenache, shiraz and mourvedre.

The Magill Estate re-opening comes just months after Seppeltsfield, in the Barossa, staged a party for 500 to mark the relaunch of its cellar door. The heritage-listed building is more than a century old and was originally a Seppelt wine-bottling hall. The old tasting bar is gone, replaced by five individual "pods". These are circular service alcoves, each with its own "wine educator" whose job, according to sales and marketing manager Chad Elson, is to "tell the Seppeltsfield story" as well as pour the wines. Upstairs, on a mezzanine level, there's a plush lounge with chesterfields reserved for visitors who've booked specialist tours, where they can take guided tastings in relative privacy.

The pods were inspired by similar set-ups in South Africa, a country that typically collects a significant proportion of the wine tourism gongs awarded each year by British-based magazine Drinks International.

Seppeltsfield is not the only Australian wine producer taking tourism cues from the "wine farms" of the South African Cape. Mornington Peninsula vigneron Garry Crittenden, one of the first to plant wine grapes in the region south of Melbourne, briefly visited the Cape in 2012, where he was struck by the sophistication and luxury of its tourism offerings. "I went to 10 cellar doors and only one had that traditional Australian model of holding out a glass and saying 'next please'."

Late last year, the Crittenden family replaced their long-established tasting bar with an airy, purpose-designed wine centre at their property in Dromana. Here, visitors are invited to take a seat at a table and offered a "wine flight menu" – a booklet listing sets of tastes based on individual themes (chardonnay, say, or the Spanish-accented Los Hermanos range). The booklet contains tasting notes and visitors are encouraged to taste and evaluate at their own pace.

Feedback has been positive, says Crittenden's winemaker son, Rollo, although some visitors can be uncertain at first. "The model is no more or less intimidating than the 'stand at the bar' model but because it's different, our staff need to be very quick to explain the concept and reassure people – they are not going to be tested on this."

Is there still a place for the traditional cellar door tasting bar? The view from abroad is: yes. "There will always be a place in the heart of Australian regions for the cellar door to accommodate guests who simply want to stop by and discover something new," says Wine Australia's new director for Britain and Europe, Laura Jewell. However, she says, having more "creative tourism" in the mix is important for engaging those who are "looking for something a little different".

Ultimate Winery Experiences ultimatewineryexperiences.com.au

Six cellar doors with a focus on learning

d'Arenberg, McLaren Vale, SA - Blending Bench session $65; darenberg.com.au

Crittenden Estate, Mornington Peninsula, Vic – Guided wine flights $8-$11; crittendenwines.com.au

Voyager Estate, Margaret River, WA – "Heroes of Margaret River" 30-minute guided tasting $25 voyagerestate.com.au

Seppeltsfield, Barossa, SA - Taste Your Birth Year tour, $60; seppeltsfield.com.au

Magill Estate, Adelaide, SA – Ultimate Penfolds Experience two-hour tour of the estate's historic sites and cellars plus private tasting session, $150; penfolds.com

Audrey Wilkinson, Hunter Valley, NSW – On-site winemaking museum open daily, free entry; audreywilkinson.com.au