Enter the Winescape: an immersive sensory experience

There’s no question the pandemic has amplified the influence of the experience economy, which gives businesses a potentially lucrative channel for success in an unpredictable market while enhancing their level of direct engagement with consumers.

The experience economy that has long existed in the wine industry is evolving as seated tastings are now de rigueur, replacing the once-ubiquitous tasting bar. Research has shown wine marketers that the sensory experience provided by a wine-tourism destination is one of the most powerful tools available to help consumers identify its unique characteristics.

While we create positive memories about a destination mostly through visual sensory stimuli, when we are engaged in an experience through the five senses, an emotional response is triggered and a distinct identity for the destination can be formed.

But because it’s not always possible for consumers to visit a winery or a vineyard, brands have developed immersive, multisensory experiences designed to create the same cross-modal connections that we experience when all our senses are engaged.

Multisensory journeys

One such experience, SENSES by Ink Grade, transports visitors to the remote Ink Grade Vineyard on Napa Valley’s Howell Mountain, where the namesake winery’s estate fruit is grown. Developed by former brand manager Julie Gilles and introduced last February at the Pavilion by Ink Grade tasting room in St. Helena, SENSES is a guided tasting of four wines held in a soundproof room whose walls become the canvas for a dramatic 360-degree video montage of the lifecycle of the vineyard, accompanied by a soundscape of recordings made
onsite.

Gilles, who joined Ink Grade owner Lawrence Wine Estates in 2020 and has since moved to New Frontier Wine Co., worked with the London-based firm Igloo Vision to create the installation, which is the first of its kind in Napa Valley. (In 2016, Igloo created a similar immersive experience for Scotch distillery Lagavulin on the island of Islay.) The 90-minute SENSES experience is offered daily from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for $195 per guest.

Considering that the relationship between wine and music has been credibly researched (though the effects of music on wine aging in barrel cellars have been hotly debated), it’s no wonder that
sound is playing a larger role in multisensory wine experiences.

In January 2022, Medlock Ames in Healdsburg introduced
the Immersive Sound Experience, a 90-minute, self-guided audio tour of the winery’s 340-acre Bell Mountain Ranch, which is followed by a guided tasting of six current-release wines paired with local, organic cheeses.

Local composer and sound artist Hugh Livingston spent months recording the soundscape, which is narrated by co-founder Ames Morison, winemaker Abby Watt, and a handful of winery staff. The experience is offered on weekends for $75 per guest.

November 2023, Medlock Ames received Regenerative Organic Certification which recognizes their efforts to go far beyond being merely organic to incorporating the concepts of soil health and worker fairness. They are just one of a handful of wineries globally to be certified.

Recent developments in neuroscience and psychology have confirmed what many artists have long intuited: that our senses are connected and that wine possesses a complexity that activates an
intricate network of sensory and aesthetic relationships. Research into cross-modal correspondence—the universal tendency of sensory functions to connect with one another and create synergies—has highlighted the strong connections between flavor and sound that we have only just begun to explore.