Asolo Montello Consortium Launches Wine Tourism Network Across 18 Municipalities

The Consorzio Tutela Vini Asolo Montello on Thursday presented Enoteca Diffusa, a wine tourism network meant to connect wineries, restaurants, wine bars, lodging operators, cultural groups and local authorities across 18 municipalities in the Asolo Montello area of Italy’s Veneto region.

According to the consortium, the project is intended to bring together the territory’s wine production and tourism offer under a single system centered on the Asolo Prosecco Superiore DOCG, Montello DOCG and Montello Asolo DOC denominations. The initiative is backed by the Treviso Belluno Chamber of Commerce.

Rather than opening a new physical venue, the consortium said the model is based on a distributed network inspired by the Italian albergo diffuso concept. In practice, it is designed to let visitors move through the area for an itinerant tasting experience while also connecting them with local food, hospitality, landscape and cultural attractions.

The consortium said a digital platform will be one of the project’s main tools. A second pillar will be common training for tourism and hospitality workers across the area. That training is expected to focus on emotional communication and digital marketing, with the aim of giving operators a shared way of presenting the territory to visitors. The network also plans to introduce a common hospitality code to make the Asolo Montello name more recognizable in international markets.

Michele Noal, president of the consortium, said the idea is to strengthen the territory by building consumer awareness through direct contact with the wines and the places where they are made. He argued that visitors who understand a wine in its local setting are more likely to make informed purchases, accept a higher value for the product and become long-term ambassadors for the area.

The project is open at no cost to local participants who sign up, the consortium said. It expects the network to expand gradually, starting with the consortium’s 475 members and reaching businesses and institutions across the 18 municipalities covered by the appellations.

For the drinks industry, the plan points to a more coordinated form of wine tourism that could extend beyond promotion and become a measurable commercial tool. If the network works as intended, producers, restaurants and retailers would have common standards for welcoming visitors and a clearer way to track how cellar visits, experience bookings and online traffic translate into direct wine sales, longer stays and broader local spending.

The consortium said it will monitor the project through performance indicators that include winery visits, bookings for wine tourism experiences, traffic generated by the territorial platform, participation in events and broader tourist flow analysis. That emphasis on measurement is notable in a sector where many wine tourism projects are promoted for image and branding but are harder to evaluate in economic terms.

Regional officials also used the launch to place the initiative in a broader policy context. Dario Bond, agriculture councilor for the Veneto region, said the project fits with the region’s view of wine tourism as a way to promote both farm businesses and the places around them. He said he plans to present a regional law on wine tourism soon and argued that initiatives such as Enoteca Diffusa should be allowed to grow without being constrained by overly rigid rules.

Bond said wine tourism should keep agricultural companies and local territories at its center, with wine presented alongside food, culture, landscape and the environment. He also said farms are facing a separate pressure from water scarcity and that drought can no longer be treated as an occasional problem. According to Bond, the region needs to help businesses prepare for that challenge with practical support and tools.

The consortium linked the project to a recent European regulatory change as well. Noal said European Regulation 2024/1143 gives wine protection consortia a coordinating role in wine tourism development, adding a formal policy framework to efforts that many producers had already been pursuing on their own.

The launch comes as tourism data for the area shows continued growth. A territorial study cited by the consortium and prepared by CGIA di Mestre found that in 2025 the Terre di Asolo and Monte Grappa area exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time since 2019. Compared with 2024, arrivals rose 17.2% and overnight stays increased 21.6%, while the average stay moved above 2.8 nights. The study estimated the total economic impact at more than €42.5 million.

Looking at the wider Monte Grappa UNESCO MAB Biosphere Reserve area, which includes 24 municipalities, the same data showed more than 226,500 arrivals and nearly 550,000 overnight stays in 2025. Those figures were up 10.3% and 12.5%, respectively.

The consortium said it wants to turn those broader tourism gains into a more organized destination strategy built around wine. In its view, the area already has strong attractions, from the hill town of Asolo to World War I sites on Montello and a wider mix of food and cultural assets. The goal of Enoteca Diffusa is to package those elements in a way that makes the visitor experience easier to book, easier to navigate and more directly connected to local producers.

That approach could also help smaller operators that often struggle to market themselves outside peak travel periods or without large standalone tourism budgets. A shared digital platform, common messaging and cross-referrals among wineries, hotels, restaurants and cultural sites can create a larger commercial network than any one business could build alone, especially in a fragmented rural destination.

Whether the project delivers that outcome will depend on participation across the territory and on the consortium’s ability to turn coordination into actual bookings and repeat visits. For now, the group has framed the initiative as an effort to build a single visitor economy around its three wine denominations while creating data that can show which experiences bring people into cellars, how long they stay and how much activity the network generates for local businesses.