Vineyard landscapes, tourism, and sustainability: theoretical and applied interrelationships

Vineyard landscapes, as agricultural cultural landscapes, bring great potential to promote formulas of sustainable tourism, understood as striving for a balance between the environmental, social, and economic conditions surrounding this activity. These landscapes define the state of conservation of natural resources, express the sociocultural authenticity of local communities, and encourage the maintenance of economic activities (either from their own productive purpose, or as cultural and scenic resource based on tourist viability). In this paper, we deal with different theoretical approaches that reveal the importance of these landscapes in relation to the territory understood as heritage, with the philosophy of sustainability and with tourist attraction based on the benefits they bring to visitors. From an applied perspective, we consider that wine farms, certified as `Wine Estates', have a significant potential to plan and promote sustainable tourism formulas.