180 Estate Winery<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe move opened up the opportunity for Murdoch, who was finishing a bachelor\u2019s degree in geographic analysis at Toronto Metropolitan University at the time, to pursue graduate studies at Brock, which is also home to the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI).<\/p>\n
Her thesis research, supervised by Professor Michael Ripmeester, a Fellow of CCOVI, was inspired by a potentially catastrophic event for the new business owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2021, we had a flash freeze and lost about 30 per cent of our vines, with a big portion of them being right at the front of the property where guests drive in and everyone could see,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The opportunity to be connected to nature while visiting the winery, whether sitting on the patio or walking through the vineyard while sipping a glass of wine, was an important part of the customer experience for Murdoch\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t pull out the vines at the time because it was winter,\u201d Murdoch says. \u201cWe got a little nervous about how people would view us, if they might think we don\u2019t take care of the vineyard.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a divide emerged among customers, according to Murdoch, with some people showing concern about the dead vines and others failing to question or even notice them. She began to wonder if visitors\u2019 reactions might be related to their locations.<\/p>\n
She says she saw a chance to use her research to build \u201cunderstanding of what people are looking for, where they\u2019re coming from, where we could market better and what we could do better in terms of caring for people who visit us.\u201d<\/p>\n
While inspired by her family business, Murdoch\u2019s project included location analysis and travel analysis to consider how boutique wineries across Niagara can better tailor their offerings to customers \u2014 from offering mid-week wine tastings to food pairings and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople come from Toronto or the greater Toronto area not for one winery, but to stay the weekend and go to several wineries,\u201d she says. \u201cThey need good experiences to find a couple spots that they love and will keep coming back to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murdoch plans to share her research findings with local municipalities, other winery owners and anyone in the industry who would like to help grow the estate winery community in Niagara.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always had a love for geography \u2014 I\u2019ve known that I wanted to do something with geography since grade six,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then I fell in love with the wine industry so quickly, that this research was really an opportunity to connect the two.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New research on the geodemographics of Niagara\u2019s winery visitors is sparking conversations in wine country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":103119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,1,5,38],"tags":[61,5014,12849,522,4263,1277,10500,14697],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103115"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103132,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103115\/revisions\/103132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}