INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

France Is Opening A Wine Theme Park Made Of Dreams

By Tabitha Britt
Published on: 18:41 PST, May 28, 2016

On Wednesday, June 1, France is answering the prayers of wine lovers everywhere with a brand new wine-themed park.

La Cité du Vin – The City of Wine – located on the banks of the Garonne River in Bordeaux, France – one of the most famous of France’s wine-growing regions – is a 10-story museum/theme park mashup, aiming to attract 450,000 visitors per year.

The structure of the museum, designed by Parisian architects XTU and English museum design experts Casson Mann Limited, symbolizes the swirl of wine moving in a glass and the coiled movement of a grapevine.

“Their design captures the spirit of wine and its fluid essence: ‘a seamless curve, intangible and sensual,'” the press brochure published by La Cité du Vin read.

According to CNBC, the museum took seven years of construction and a whopping 81 million euro ($91 million) to complete. With 19 percent of the funding coming from private companies and 81 percent from public sources, the project is the very first of its kind in France.

With a 250-seat auditorium for concerts, performances, screenings, and debates, The City of Wine hopes to create a varied cultural experience for museum goers. There are 19 themed spaces altogether, most of which are interactive.

“Our mission is to promote and share the cultural, universal, and living heritage that is wine with the broadest possible audience,” the website reads. “Our goal is to focus on emotions, sensation, and imagination.”

Unfortunately, this theme park will not include merry-go-rounds or rollercoasters, but there will be a boat ride that mimics a wine merchant’s journey around the world.

In addition to on-stage performances, The City of Wine will offer visitors a chance to tour “The Wine Routes,” where attendees will be guided through the famous vineyards in and around Bordeaux, with tastings along the way, of course. The museum will also feature a year-round permanent tour that will take patrons on a journey through the evolution of wine and its civilizations.

According to the brochure, “The permanent tour is structured around an array of different experiences: sometimes visitors will be standing, interacting directly with the e-vine or Meet the Experts, at other times they will be seated, or ushered All Aboard a ship for a voyage across the oceans and through the ages, and at certain moments they will need to be almost horizontal to marvel at the starry projections of artworks illustrating the theme of Bacchus and Venus.”

There are three tastings areas altogether, including a multi-sensory space and educational workshops for young audience members. According to CNBC, The City of Wine, complete with a reading room and three different food areas with a panoramic restaurant on the seventh floor, expects to bring in 38 million euros of economic activity in terms of tourism and job creation each year.

The museum’s restaurant and boutique list includes La Cité du Vin boutique, a gift-shop boutique filled with books, limited edition items, and wine-themed souvenirs for all of the vino lovers in your life; Le 7 panoramic restaurant, a top-notch eatery with an exceptional view and a wine-list with more than 500 wines from around the world; and Latitude20, a chic wine bar that offers snacks and more than 50 different wine selections.

According to the museum website, La Cité du Vin is run by the Fondation pour la Culture et les Civilisations du Vin, a foundation recognized as being of public interest by Ministerial Decree in December 2014.

[Image via Pixabay]

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