Vinic Leisure and Lifestyles: Understanding the Wine-Engaged in New Zealand

Abstract

The array of activities and experiences surrounding the enjoyment of wine serves as an increasingly enticing area of interest for consumers and researchers alike. While the trend in consumer-oriented wine research centres on cellar door experiences and supermarket purchasing, the current study broadens the understanding of wine-engagement by applying a leisure theory perspective. Drawing on concepts from the serious leisure perspective and recreation specialization, this study is a qualitative investigation of vinic, or wine-related, leisure and lifestyles in New Zealand. In-depth interviews were conducted with 35 residents of the South Island, representing a wide range of engagement levels and styles. The findings suggest that wine-related lifestyles incorporate a range of personal, sociocultural, and structural orientations within three systems: profits (including rewards and benefits), engagement (including involvement and commitment), and perseverance (including barriers, constraints, costs, and negotiation strategies). These orientations to wine can be characterized along continuums of simplicity/complexity, generality/specificity, casualness/seriousness, peripherality/centrality to lifestyle, satisfaction/fulfilment, and situationality/durability. Incorporating a temporal context, lifestyles are experienced as leisure careers, or a process of change over time characterized by various trajectories that transition through phases of engagement. These transitions are marked by turning points or key moments that can shift the course and nature of the lifestyle. Finally, this study identifies two lifestyle types, termed drinkers and tasters that represent distinct collections of orientations and behaviours to vinic leisure.

In summary, this study aims to address the current gap in empirical and theoretical understanding of the overlap between wine and leisure, by examining the characteristics of wine-related leisure as a complex leisure pursuit and enduring lifestyle. Additionally, this study is intended to not merely be another exploratory study into a serious or specializable leisure activity, but to address the personal, sociocultural, and structural backgrounds affecting the development of various forms of wine consumption as part of a vinic lifestyle.