The City of Wine in Bordeaux -

  • Several new products are already scheduled from 2021, but for the moment the Cité du Vin does not yet know when it will be able to reopen.

  • In the coming years, the establishment wishes to open its gardens to the public, to organize concerts and exhibitions.

  • New forms of tasting will also accompany the visits.

Turn the page, after a year 2020 which saw attendance plummet by 63%.

The Cité du Vin de Bordeaux has ambitious cultural projects for this year 2021, in particular an exhibition on the theme “Drinking with the gods” scheduled for the spring, and an investment plan of seven million euros that it must develop. by 2026 to completely renew its permanent course.

But before being able to implement all this, it will be necessary to reopen and relaunch a machine that attracted, before the crisis, 420,000 visitors per year.

20 Minutes

questioned the director of the establishment, Philippe Massol.

What will become of the cultural project that you have developed for 2021?

We will probably not do everything, knowing that this project was worked on in October and presented last December… I expected a low attendance of 280,000 people in 2021, against 420,000 in 2019, but I did not foresee a closure in 2021. There , we don't even know when we're going to reopen.

Does this mean that the Cité du Vin is in danger?

No.

On the other hand, if things are made to last too long, if the tourist life does not return as it was before because we would chain chaotic situations for months, even years, because of a virus that we do not control, we should review our economic model.

I'm not by nature pessimistic, so I don't see it that way, but as we go from surprise to surprise ...

What do you hope to be able to present in 2021?

At the end of March-beginning of April, we will have a new website, because we will give a very important place to the Cité du Vin online.

This is something that we had started working on before the crisis, but she accelerated the project.

Suddenly, we are producing podcasts, we are going to aggregate content, we want to try to run online workshops, organize guided tours ... From the end of June-beginning of July, we will be offering a new "companion of visit ”, but you can also download an app on your own smartphone.

This will make it possible in particular to offer a personalized route, something that was in great demand.

Five years after its opening, what is the ambition of the Cité du Vin for the coming years?

Our mission is to change 100% of our content by 2026, for our ten years.

So we have a program over six years, to change our 19 modules, either by modifying the content, or by completely changing the subject.

There will be two years of significant change, 2022 and 2024. In 2022, we will tackle the whole universe that explains the way we make wine, because our visitors want to better understand how wine is made, so we will probably make a show that will take the place of the animation

on Board

.

In 2024, we plan to review the entire upper plateau, to create a universe around the senses, with something very innovative.

Our wine dossier

And the other years, nothing will happen?

Yes, of course.

In 2023, we will complete the visit with the possibility of taking the permanent route accompanied by an immersive tasting, in which we can taste several glasses.

We also have a project in the garden, because we want the people of Bordeaux to take more ownership of it.

We would like it to become a place of conviviality in the evening with a musical program, we will work there with the city of Bordeaux, and we would like that from 2022 art arrives in these gardens with a project of loan of works, in relation with the vine and the wine.

At the same time, other wine-related projects are emerging around Bordeaux, in particular the project for the largest wine tourism center in Europe, in Libourne.

What do you think ?

There is a kind of emulation, despite the context, that's very good: Sauternes is talking about a Cité du vin project, Planète Bordeaux is completely reviewing its concept with a new project, and there is also a very big project brought to Pauillac.

Important projects were missing in the Bordeaux region.

Libourne is very ambitious, but the place is indeed extraordinary, and it can become a destination near Saint-Emilion which already welcomes around a million visitors per year.

It's very good, you have to dream big.

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