Tasting rooms have long been a staple of wineries, breweries and, to a lesser extent, the makers of cheese, olive oil and other delicacies. But ice cream?

At Oregon’s Tillamook Creamery, the experience of tasting goes way beyond just trying little samples at the counter before buying your favorite scoop.

Recently, I attended the creamery’s Tillamook Exclusive Ice Cream Experience, a nearly 90-minute session in which “brand ambassadors” relayed the history of the 115-year-old dairy cooperative, explained how the creamery makes its ice cream and allowed our group of about 15 guests to try our hand at taste-testing. At the end, people were served dishes of four different flavors of ice cream.

The $45-per-person presentations at the creamery’s visitor center in Tillamook, Ore., were started about 3 ½ years ago and have quickly become one of the center’s most popular attractions, attended by about 20,000 people last year, said Levi Grimes, who oversees the tours as Tillamook’s assistant manager of guest experiences.

Tillamook started producing ice cream in 1947 with three flavors – vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Today the company makes 26 core flavors and two seasonal flavors and is always coming up with new blends; this year it introduced four new chocolate varieties, brand ambassador Bryant Castillo told the group.

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Tillamook has long marketed its ice cream on its high-quality ingredients, using more cream and less air than the industry standard with no artificial flavors or sweeteners, no synthetic colors and no high fructose corn syrup. A lab sensory team taste-tests the products to ensure quality.

“One single worker will test 500 samples of cheese per day, and three gallons of ice cream,” Castillo said. As with wine, the testers are examining aroma, texture and flavor, he said. Ice cream cartons are cut open to make sure ingredients such as cookie chunks or fruit bits are distributed uniformly.

The Ice Cream Experience is one of numerous recent marketing innovations for Tillamook, which expanded its visitor center six years ago, installed a brand-themed children’s play area at the Portland airport and has boosted partnerships with various Pacific Northwest businesses. More than 1.4 million tourists visit the creamery each year, or as many as 10,000 per day during the busy season.

The tasting attraction comes as many consumers are looking for an experience in connection with their food and drink choices, as evidenced by the growth in agritourism, which generated $1.26 billion in income for U.S. farms in 2022, according to the Census of Agriculture.

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This trend was “certainly part of the reason” for introducing the tasting presentations, Grimes told me. “I would say our main reason was to grow our relationship with the public and to give them additional ways to connect with the brand,” he said.