The context
Domaine Pierre Sourdais is a family estate established in 1981 in Cravant-les-Coteaux, in the heart of the Chinon appellation. The estate farms 27 hectares of vines, harvested by hand, and makes its wines using traditional methods.
The cellar, dug by hand by Pierre Sourdais more than 30 years ago, is a world of its own. Both a working wine cellar and a poetic space, it combines sculptures, references to the living world and a staging of the passing of time.
The situation
Before Merci Gabin was introduced, two formats existed side by side.
- Guided tours, rich and personal, but dependent on staff availability
- Self-guided tours, quicker and sometimes hard to understand without explanation
Guided tours conveyed the full richness of the place, but they took up a lot of the team’s time. Self-guided tours, on the other hand, were not always enough to convey what makes the cellar so unusual.
The challenges
The estate needed to strike a balance between welcoming visitors, the tour and the tasting.
- Showcase the cellar and its unique world
- Make the self-guided tour easier to understand
- Keep the team available for tastings and sales
The aim was not to replace the human-led tour, but to organise visiting times better.
The solution
Merci Gabin was rolled out as an audio tour companion, available on tablets lent to visitors.
- A route that visitors follow at their own pace
- Audio content that gives them the keys to understand what they see
- Simple to use, with no technical hurdles
This setup supports the visit without changing its pace, and gives meaning to a place that could otherwise remain hard to interpret.
A tour that stays lively
The audio tour does not replace the team. It simply gives the visit a structure.
At the end of the tour, visitors ring a bell to let the team know they are there. Someone then comes to greet them and take them to the tasting room.
The transition from self-guided visit to human conversation happens naturally.
The results
- Time saved for the team
- Better organised tastings
- Visitors who are more open to conversation at the end of the tour
The tour is still self-guided, but it is now better supported, which lets the estate focus on the moments of real encounter.