**5. Conclusions**

If tourism is to succeed and expand in the future, new paradigms have to be brought into the field [79]. Wine tourism as a form of tourism may make a grea<sup>t</sup> contribution to the tourism industry and to the development of new experiential paradigms. Such experiences are often offered in small-sized, rural establishments that are linked to nature and offer social distancing. This study has established a reliable and valid 18-item scale composed of four dimensions to measure the wine experience within a wine tourism context. This was applied in two different environments and with both national and international wine tourists. The research clearly highlights the major finding that the wine experience construct is formed by the four dimensions proposed (wine storytelling, wine tasting excitement, wine involvement, and winescape) that simultaneously and accurately depict the wine-related tourism experience as being justified by the significant relationships between dimensions. Wine storytelling appears as a most significant dimension due to the fact that visits to the wine cellars begin and end with the wine tour guide/winemaker/wine producer, where there are authentic stories related to wine and wine tourism, which are much appreciated by wine tourists. The tasting of the wine also creates delight through a wine sensorial excitatory stimulus. It is also common for wine tourists to be involved during the visits where wine tourists appreciate the wine scenery in the cellar winescape.

This is the first study demonstrating the combined used of wine experience dimensions in constructing a useful measurement tool. This measurement approach extends this scope because a scale had never been developed to measure the wine experience of wine tourists. Hence, there was the emerging need for development and validation this new scale—the wine experience scale. The study also reinforces the growing literature on wine experience by establishing representative constructs which address research gaps in terms of the lack of a validated scale to evaluate the wine experience. Therefore, the measurement tool proposed in this study provides a procedure for further examination in future wine tourism research. The wine experience dimensions within the wine tourist experience are an important topic in wine tourism research, and thus these dimensions are considered key wine experience drivers, derived from empirical evidence and a holistic approach, understood as essential to more successful and memorable wine experiences for all kinds of wine tourists. It is recognised that wine tourists expect the "best wine experience". The consistent relationship between the four underlying dimensions was demonstrated, and it was proven that, as a whole, they form the wine experience construct. The main managemen<sup>t</sup> implications imply that managers should understand how a wine tour experience can be improved across a range of wine dimensions in a highly immersive wine experience, as is the case and example of wine and cultural heritage [80]. Wine tour guides should take full advantage of their close contact with wine tourists during the visits and should be monitored and more customized, first to reflect on better performance in wine guided tours, and thus achieving a better wine engagemen<sup>t</sup> in the future. Hence, exclusive and memorable wine experiences can be promoted as follows: Wine tours, wine tastings, wine events, and wine courses, among others, taking full advantage of the kind of wine tourist profile (e.g., wine lovers, wine interested, and wine curious), according to other studies similar to this one [81].

The results further underline the importance of wine as the main core product in wine tourism experiences. In addition, wine tourists in Madeira and Porto wine cellars retain quite strong, distinctive impressions of each wine cellar-related travel. Notably, there is a growing potential for managers, stakeholders, players, opinion makers/leaders, and marketers to extract benefits from this managerial point of view [82]. In summary, wine potentiates a multi-experience for wine tourists, so managers can ge<sup>t</sup> better results by designing wine and wine tourism products and communication strategies around the main themes linked to each dimension of the wine experience explained in this research, all of which appear to contribute to more complete wine experiences.

Regarding the research limitations and suggestions for future research, the period of data collection (during the summer) was short, although it is the time when there is the largest number of wine tourists, which leads to the suggestion for a cross sectional evaluation of wine experience of the wine tourists, for instance every season, and a comparison with other cellars of the new- and old-world wine tourism destinations. In this way, high coverage of the population can be achieved in order to establish the generalisability and consistency of this newly developed and validated scale.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, V.S., P.R., and N.A.; methodology, V.S. and P.R.; validation, V.S. and P.R.; formal Analysis, V.S. and P.R.; investigation, V.S and P.R.; resources, V.S. and N.A.; data curation, V.S. and P.R.; writing—original draft, P.R., V.S., N.A., and E.S.-P. Writing—review & editing, V.S. and P.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by national funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, IP, within the scope of the reference project UIDB/04470/2020.

**Acknowledgments:** CiTUR—Research, Development and Innovation Center, Polytechnic of Leiria and ISLA Santarém—Higher Institute of Management and Administration of Santarém.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
