Werkspoorfestival 2026: four days at the bar with Radacini & Winzer Krems
A four-day Easter activation inside the Werkspoorkathedraal in Utrecht. Fifteen trained sommelières on the floor. One pour list covering the Delta portfolio. 1,794 bottles in the hands of visitors.
A sommelier-led wine bar as the heart of the activation
Delta Wines asked Meisjes van de Wijn to build the activation for Radacini and Winzer Krems at Werkspoorfestival 2026. The goal was to give both producers a platform where visitors actually meet the wines instead of just picking something off a list. Over the four-day Easter weekend, our team built that platform inside the Werkspoorkathedraal.
Fifteen sommelières worked the bar in shifts across four days. Every one of them had attended a full training session in advance, where we tasted through the entire Delta pour list together, discussed the producers, the regions, and the stories worth telling. The result was a bar where no two pours were alike. Each glass came with context.
This report describes how the activation was designed, what visitors responded to, and which wines left the strongest impression. It also covers the supporting cross-media layer we built around the bar to extend the impact beyond the four days.
Performance note: the original proposal projected a pour volume of approximately 600 bottles across the Delta portfolio. Actual volume came in at 1,794 bottles, nearly three times forecast. The activation comfortably outperformed expectations on volume, and the visitor response suggests it outperformed on brand impact too.
Every visitor who approached the bar was invited to taste first
The single most important principle behind our approach was also the simplest: no visitor had to commit to a wine without having tasted it. That meant that even wines most guests had never heard of, like the Fetească Albă, the Orange Grüner Veltliner and the Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio blend, got their fair share of the glass.
This taste-before-you-choose approach removed the hesitation that unfamiliar origins usually trigger. A guest who had "come for a Riesling" often left with a Moldovan Fetească Albă because our sommelières made the offer feel natural rather than pushy. That is where the value of a trained team shows itself.
Trained sommelières on the floor
A full Meisjes van de Wijn team in shifts over four days. Professional, knowledgeable, and briefed specifically on the Delta pour list before day one.
Team tasting session in advance
Before the festival opened, the complete team sat down together to taste through the full line-up. Every sommelière could speak to the producer, the grape, and the style of every bottle.
Taste-before-you-choose policy
Every guest was offered a taste before committing. This single approach put the less familiar wines in the same league as the safe picks, and turned hesitant guests into confident buyers.
Two wine houses, two stories worth telling
The Delta pour list gave us two producers with very different stories, each with something to offer a curious Dutch audience. We built the bar experience around those narratives so visitors did not just taste wine, but understood where it came from.
Radacini
Founded in 2011, with vineyards rooted in a five-thousand-year-old wine tradition. Over 800 hectares of own vineyards across Moldova's three main PGI regions, combining international varieties with indigenous grapes like Fetească Albă and Rară Neagră.
We positioned Radacini as the discovery of the festival: a country most visitors had never associated with serious wine, a producer that in 2024 was crowned World's Best Cabernet at the Concours International des Cabernets in France.
Winzer Krems
Roots going back to the growers' guild of Krems and Stein in 1447, formalized as a cooperative in 1938. Today, nearly 900 winegrowers work under the Sandgrube 13 banner. In 2023 the estate completed a €37 million cellar renovation: tradition and modernity side by side.
We positioned Winzer Krems as the benchmark of Austrian precision: Grüner Veltliner and Riesling from some of the most respected vineyard sites along the Danube, including Ried Goldberg and the Kellermeister Privat selections.
Every bottle counted
All pouring figures below are calculated from the Delta Wines delivery invoice minus the returns credit note. They reflect the exact number of bottles opened and served across the four festival days.
The wines that left the strongest impression
Volume and impression are not the same thing. The high-volume pours (Pinot Grigio, Classic Grüner Veltliner, Blanc de Cabernet) did the heavy lifting at the bar. But there is a second set of wines that did something more interesting: they changed the way visitors thought about the producers. These are the wines that will stay with them.
Radacini Reserve Chardonnay / Pinot Grigio
This was the surprise wine of the weekend. Most visitors arrive at a festival with a fairly fixed idea of what Pinot Grigio tastes like: light, easy, forgettable. The Radacini Reserve blend delivered the exact opposite: rich, complex, oak-aged, textured. Almost every guest who tasted it commented on how different it was from what they expected. Several came back for a second glass.
Radacini Fetească Albă
Nobody at the bar recognized the grape, and that worked in our favour. When a guest is offered a wine they cannot pronounce, they either say no or they get curious. Our sommelières made sure they got curious. The result: a floral, aromatic white from an indigenous Moldovan variety became one of the wines guests most wanted to talk about.
Winzer Krems Kellermeister Privat Riesling
Simple observation: it just kept moving. Austrian Riesling still sits in the shadow of its German counterpart for most Dutch consumers, but this wine consistently pulled people in. Precise, aromatic, unmistakably Kremstal. Visitors who tasted it often named it as their wine of the festival when asked.
The Grüner Veltliner range as a set
Showing Classic, Reserve, Ried Goldberg and the Orange Grüner Veltliner side by side turned out to be one of the most educational moments at the bar. Guests who thought they knew Grüner Veltliner got to see the range of the grape in one tasting. It repositioned Grüner from a single style into a whole wine category worth exploring.
Grüner Veltliner Be(e) Orange
The cherry on top. Skin-contact wines still feel experimental to most Dutch wine drinkers, and pouring an Orange Grüner Veltliner at the bar gave the activation its most memorable moments. Guests who would never order an orange wine at a restaurant tried it at the bar, and many left properly converted.
Blauer Zweigelt, lightly chilled with food
Zweigelt is an easy wine to underestimate. Served lightly chilled alongside the food on offer at the festival, it consistently outperformed the heavier reds in visitor feedback. Fresh, cherry-fruited, food-friendly. A real illustration of how service context can turn a wine's reputation around.
"I always thought Grüner Veltliner was one thing. Tasting four of them side by side, the classic, the Goldberg, the Reserve, and then that orange, it is like meeting the same producer four times."Visitor at the bar, Easter Sunday
A cross-media layer to make the bar experience last
A festival activation is intense but short. To give Radacini and Winzer Krems a longer tail, we built a supporting cross-media layer around the bar, so what visitors tasted at the festival had somewhere to go in the weeks that followed.
QR codes at the bar
Large printed QR codes took visitors directly to dedicated landing pages for each producer, with the story, the full wine list, and retail links in Utrecht and online.
Dedicated landing pages
meisjesvandewijn.nl/Radacini and /WinzerKrems, built specifically for this activation, guiding visitors from a festival glass to a bottle on the dinner table.
Editorial blog feature
Two Delta wines featured in our "Top 3 Summer Wines 2026" blog, seeding and extending the story before, during, and after the festival weekend.
Retail partners in Utrecht
Familie van Rijk and Besseling Wijnen, two trusted Utrecht wine shops carrying the Delta portfolio, featured on the landing pages as direct purchase points for visitors.
Social media content
Instagram stories and posts during and after the festival extended the reach to the wider Meisjes van de Wijn community.
Community newsletter
The Meisjes van de Wijn newsletter featured the activation, the producers, and the wines, keeping Radacini and Winzer Krems top of mind in the weeks after the festival.
Six observations from four days at the bar
Volume comfortably outperformed forecast
The original proposal estimated pour volume across the Delta portfolio at approximately 600 bottles. Actual volume reached 1,794, nearly three times forecast. The combination of festival context, a trained team of sommelières, and a story-led bar approach scaled further than any of us had planned for.
A trained team made the difference between pouring and activating
The pre-festival team tasting we did before day one translated directly into what visitors experienced at the bar. Fifteen sommelières who could speak confidently about every wine on the list turned a pour into a story. The effect was visible at the bar, and it is visible in the numbers.
Taste-before-you-choose worked for the lesser-known wines
The wines most visitors would never have picked off a list, like Fetească Albă, the Orange Grüner Veltliner and the Reserve Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio blend, became the memorable wines of the weekend. The mechanism was simple: when the cost of trying drops to zero, people try. That is how the less familiar names in the portfolio ended up competing with the safe picks.
The Dutch audience was more open to Moldova than expected
Radacini delivered 1,338 bottles poured in four days. Just as telling: the specific wines that resonated, Blanc de Cabernet, Fetească Albă and Reserve Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio, were the ones that asked something new of visitors. Unfamiliarity turned out to be less of a barrier than we anticipated, which was a genuine surprise.
Showing the Grüner range side by side changed what guests saw
Putting Classic, Reserve, Ried Goldberg and Orange Grüner Veltliner on the same bar did more for Winzer Krems than any single wine could have done on its own. Visitors who thought they knew Grüner Veltliner left with a far more complete picture of what the cooperative actually makes.
Serving temperature changed how the Zweigelt was received
Blauer Zweigelt lightly chilled alongside the festival food consistently performed better than the warmer reds on the list. A small change in how the wine reached the glass, a noticeable difference in how it was received. Worth keeping in mind.