Finger Lakes Region, N.Y. -- The Wine Trails of Keuka Lake, Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake have deployed a new program called Safe Group Wine Tours, designed to minimize "inappropriate behavior" by unruly tour groups. More than 50 wineries are participating in the program.

Rowdy groups will be sanctioned with Yellow Cards or Red Cards, a system adopted from the sport of soccer. A Yellow Card is intended as a warning, giving the group an opportunity to control itself before visiting the next winery on its itinerary. A Red Card will result in the offending group being limited, or denied access, to additional wineries for the remainder of the day.

"A group exhibiting inappropriate or illegal behavior will, at the discretion of the winery staff, be literally presented a Yellow Card or, in extreme situations, a Red Card," Seneca Lake Wine Trail executive director Paul Thomas told Wines & Vines. "At that point, the winery will retain documents tracking the group and behavior for centralized tracking, as well as calling the next one or two wineries in the group's itinerary to warn them that a carded group may be approaching them. Then that next winery can make a decision, based on the carding winery's description, whether or not they will permit that rambunctious group from visiting their winery."

Thomas pointed out that some tourists have come to view Finger Lakes wine trails as a "pub crawl," where the main objective is to drink an excessive amount of alcohol. The Safe Group Tours program was initiated in response to a growing number of incidents involving unruly tour groups reported by wine trails members.

"There wasn't a particular, single instance to inspire the program, but an identified trend that was increasing, which was universally identified," Thomas said. Recent examples of bad tour group behavior, he added, include "a college student almost killing himself doing a header off a winery deck, another customer coming close to drowning in a winery pond clearly posted 'no swimming,' customers urinating in the parking lot or scampering around topless.

"The good news in all this, I believe, is that we're taking a prudent, gentle approach early enough to affect a subtle change…. All participants in the program look forward to a slowly evolving environment in all wineries, whereby customers can continue to learn, have fun and enjoy the region's fine wines, without the inconvenience of having uncontrollable customers making them uncomfortable."

For more information, visit the program's newly launched website at groupwinetours.com.