Great Wine Capitals chooses Porto for Wine Tourism meeting in 2024

Porto will host the midterm meeting of the Great Wine Capitals network in 2024. The announcement was made at the meeting, which took place last week in the Spanish city of Bilbao.

The midterm meeting will bring official representatives and various professionals from the partner cities to the city and region and will enhance the international positioning of Porto as an important wine tourism destination.

During the work session among the executive representatives of the network, topics related to the strategy, budget and status of ongoing projects were discussed.

Catarina Santos Cunha, councilwoman for Tourism and Internationalization of Porto City Hall, explained that, the Municipality presented new proposals for the development of the network, such as the Sponsorship project, which aims to bring more investment and more projection of both the network, or the wine regions that are part of it, as well as other initiatives to bring the network closer to its stakeholders.

“The meeting proved to be very fruitful, with very positive results, with Porto’s proposals being welcomed with enthusiasm by the presents, which shown that we are aligned in pursuing the common object of promoting wine tourism in our regions”, explained the responsible.

In addition to the midterm meeting, participants had the opportunity to carry out technical visits to the Rioja region, in a benchmarking action, which included the Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture and Bodegas Baigorri.

This was the first meeting of the Great Wine Capitals held with the presence of the most recent member - Hawke's Bay (New Zealand).

Great Wine Capitals is an international cooperation network, formed by cities linked to wine regions recognized worldwide for their wines, which aims to promote wine tourism in these regions, stimulating economic, academic, and cultural development in their community, through exchanges and joint projects.

There are currently 12 cities and wine regions, from around the world, that are part of this partnership: Adelaide (Australia), Bilbao-Rioja (Spain), Bordeaux (France), Cape Town-Cape Winelands (South Africa), Hawke's Bay (New Zealand), Lausanne (Switzerland), Mainz-Rheinhessen (Germany), Mendoza (Argentina), Porto (Portugal), S. Francisco-Napa Valley (USA), Valparaíso-Casablanca Valley (Chile) and Verona (Italy).

Porto is a founding member and represents the wine regions of the Douro and Vinhos Verdes in the network, with the Municipality of Porto officially representing Porto and its regions in this context.