Regional products have become a core feature of tourism-led local development strategies. Regional products bring together commodities and imaginaries, ideas about authenticity, and geographies of consumption. Tourism promotion can be intended as a complex unfolding of human and non-human performances. This article discusses the performative approach, by drawing on international debates in the domain of geography. It suggests that this approach could prove useful as a tool to integrate Italian debates on territorializzazione and heritage-making. The foundation of this article results from an ethnographic research carried out in Verucchio, in the Rimini hinterland. Verucchio has recently been rebranded for cultural tourism, with the opening of new consumption spaces devoted to regional food and wine. The elements selected, from the shops' visual merchandise, through to the emphasis on traditional architecture, the retailers' storytelling actively contributes to heritage-making via a set of performances.
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