Governance and promotion of territorial heritage along the wine routes of Spain

Wine tourism has become a complementary source of income in wine regions. To take advantage of this opportunity, in Spain, various wine routes have been launched. The objective is to analyse the type of heritage elements that each Spanish wine route prioritises in relation to its governance and the type of actors that integrate them. The sources of information were documents published on the internet concerning wine routes. From this information, two variables have been calculated: one regarding the heritage elements valued as tourist resources on the routes themselves and another related to the number and type of partners that make up the route package. The wine routes have been classified into two types based on the average values of each variable and with Fisher’s exact test it has been verified whether or not there is a dependency relationship between both variables. The findings highlight the existence of an association between the type of partners and the heritage elements that are valued: the greater the variety of partners, the greater the number of assets promoted. These results allow us to consider governance of wine routes as strategic within rural development programs