Somebody has to drive. Better it is not you.
Which Douro day actually gets you onto the terraces. What a Napa tasting flight costs before the transfer. Reviews of the vineyard visits you can book, wherever the vines are.
Three ways into the vines
The Douro, by road and river 2 Wine Regions, Farm-to-Table Lunch & Boat
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · from $94
Napa and Sonoma in a day Napa and Sonoma Wine Country Full-Day Tour from San Francisco
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $165
Nine pours in Kakheti Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $29
A Chianti cellar, a Bordeaux cru, a Malibu hillside, a Hunter Valley veranda.
Four estate visits that need no planning and no hire car. What each pours, what it costs, and how much of the day it takes.
01Half a day from FlorenceHalf day Chianti Vineyard Escape from Florence with Wine TastingsTwo Chianti estates and the drive through the hills between them. Back in Florence before dinner, which is the point.
02One hour, one classed growthSaint-Émilion: Grand Cru Classé Winery Visit and TastingA Grand Cru Classé property inside the walls of Saint-Emilion. The cheapest serious tasting in the whole catalogue.
03A walk, then a glassMalibu: Guided Vineyard Hike with Photo Stops and WineGuided up a Malibu hillside vineyard with the Pacific behind you, tasting at the top. Trainers, not loafers.
04The Hunter Valley picnicAudrey Wilkinson Vineyard: Picnic with Wine Masterclass TastingA masterclass on the veranda at Audrey Wilkinson, then a hamper on the grass with the vines dropping away below.
In Italy the estate visit is lunch with a vineyard attached.
The whole Italian list →Four kinds of Italian day, and they are genuinely different bookings. A Chianti half-day is a drive and two tastings. A vineyard lunch is three hours at a table. Etna is volcanic soil and a completely different set of grapes. Pick by how much of the day you want to give it.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,196 travellers on the most-booked Italian dayHalf day Chianti Vineyard Escape from Florence with Wine Tastings
Chianti half-daysTwo estates, the hill road between them, back for dinner.
A table at the estateThree hours at a long table, the wine poured by whoever grew it.
Dinner in the vinesSunset service, four courses, the cellar opened afterwards.
Volcano vineyardsNerello grown on black ash, with the crater in view.
All 273 Italian estate visits →
What a day in the vines actually costs.
Every estate visit on the site, grouped by price. The bottom band is not the compromise band: some of the best pours in the catalogue are the cheapest.
Walk-in tastings, cellar-door hours, Georgian and Portuguese estate visits, the odd hillside walk with a glass at the top.
The standard full day: two or three estates, a driver, lunch somewhere with a view of the rows.
Private guides, Napa and Champagne, classed-growth properties and the dinners that run until the cellar closes.
A tasting-room hour, a full wine-country day, or a table in the vines.
The three shapes almost every vineyard booking takes. The full day includes the driving and usually the lunch. The winery visit is an hour and a flight of glasses. The lunch booking is the one that turns into an afternoon.
The cellar is where the estate stops performing and starts explaining.
Concha y Toro keeps its old casks in a tunnel under the hill. Douro quintas stack pipes three high in stone lodges. Champagne cuts its cellars into chalk. Cool, dark and the one part of the visit that is the same in February as in August.
Six wine countries that hand you a day out, not a homework assignment.
Tuscan cellars an hour from a railway station. Bordeaux estates that take walk-ins. Napa tasting rooms that need booking six weeks out. Cape winelands you can do between flights. Each one behaves differently, and the day is priced accordingly.
Three vineyard landscapes that exist nowhere else.
Tasting rooms look much the same the world over. Schist terraces cut by hand, clay jars buried to the neck, and cellars mined out of chalk do not.
Terraces of the Douro
The valley is schist, too steep and too hard for a tractor, so the vines sit on walled terraces built by hand over three centuries. Some of the oldest are single rows a metre wide. Harvest is still largely done on foot, baskets carried up the steps, and the river below carried the pipes down to Porto until the railway took the job in the 1880s.
- 1Douro Valley Tour: 2 Vineyard Visits, River Cruise, Winery Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,542 reviews
- 2Douro Valley Wine Tour: 3 Vineyard Visits, Wine Tastings, Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,562 reviews
- 33 Douro Valley Vineyards Tour with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 705 reviews
Wine in buried clay
Kakheti ferments in qvevri, egg-shaped clay jars buried to the neck in the floor of the marani. Skins, stems and pips go in with the juice and stay for months, which is where the amber colour and the grip come from. It is the oldest continuous winemaking method on earth, roughly eight thousand years, and it is still what a family estate pours you at the kitchen table.
- 1Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,774 reviews
- 2Kakheti Wine Region Tour with 9 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,541 reviews
- 3Kakheti Wine Region Tour with 10 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,160 reviews
Cellars cut into chalk
The Romans quarried chalk out of the ground under Reims and left cone-shaped pits called crayeres. The houses connected them into kilometres of galleries that hold a steady ten degrees without any help, which is exactly what a second fermentation wants. Some run four levels deep, and the walls still carry marks left by the people who sheltered in them.
- 1Jeep tour of the vineyards with tasting and visits★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 70 reviews
- 2Champagne Vineyard Experience: Delve into the terroir★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 52 reviews
- 3Gourmet walk in the heart of the vineyards with Champagne tasting near Epernay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 45 reviews
The best way through a wine region is slowly, on a bike.
Vineyard roads were built for tractors, which makes them flat, quiet and almost traffic free. An e-bike day covers four or five estates without a licence, a parking space or a designated driver, and the tasting stops stop feeling like a schedule.
Every vineyard ride →
Harvest, Sundays, and the question of who drives.
Four things decide whether a vineyard day works. Somebody has to stay sober, so either the tour includes a driver or one of you is on water. Most European estates shut on Sunday and much of August. September and October are harvest, which is the best light and the worst access, because the crew is picking. And the rows are dirt, gravel and slope, so bring shoes you can walk in.
France sells the vineyard by the appellation, not by the hour.
Bordeaux runs on classed growths and half-day minibuses out of the city. Burgundy is walled plots you can walk between. Alsace is a signposted road through villages with a cellar on each corner. Champagne is chalk and timed slots. Four regions, four completely different days.
- 1Saint-Émilion: Grand Cru Classé Winery Visit and Tastingfrom $23
- 2Saint Emilion Half-Day Trip with Wine Tasting & Winery Visit from Bordeauxfrom $133
- 3Saint-Émilion: Bordeaux Vineyard Tour and Wine Tastingfrom $21
The most popular vineyard days on the site.
Every vineyard we have written up →More travellers book these than anything else in the catalogue, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
2 Wine Regions, Farm-to-Table Lunch & Boat
Tour two Portuguese wine regions from Porto with tastings, a farm-to-table meal, fire-opened Vintage Port, and a private Douro cruise.
From · $94
Our review →2
Napa and Sonoma Wine Country Full-Day Tour from San Francisco
from $165
3
Douro Valley Tour: 2 Vineyard Visits, River Cruise, Winery Lunch
from $101
4
San Francisco Super Saver: Muir Woods & Wine Country w/ optional Gourmet Lunch
from $179
5
Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings
from $29
6
Kakheti Wine Region Tour with 9 Wine Tastings
from $29
7
Half day Chianti Vineyard Escape from Florence with Wine Tastings
from $53
8
Kakheti Wine Region Tour with 10 Wine Tastings
from $18
Four bookings the vines will not hold for you.
Most of this list can be arranged the night before. These four cannot. Harvest closes the working estates to visitors, the small properties take one group a day, and a tasting room with eight seats is full by Tuesday.
- 01Napa and Sonoma Wine Country Full-Day Tour from San FranciscoNapa tasting rooms run on appointments, not walk-ins, and the small ones take one seating at a time. Book before the flights, not after.
- 02Douro Valley Tour: 2 Vineyard Visits, River Cruise, Winery LunchThe Douro quintas run a fixed number of boats and minibuses a day and the valley road is slow. September and October go first, because that is the harvest.
- 03Champagne Vineyard Experience: Delve into the terroirThe houses in Reims and Epernay sell timed cellar slots with a cap on each one. There is no queue to join if you turn up without one.
- 04Saint-Émilion: Grand Cru Classé Winery Visit and TastingThe classed-growth properties inside the walls take small groups only, and several close entirely during the vendange.
Bordeaux, Saint-Emilion, Burgundy, Champagne, Alsace: five regions on one railway map.
Bordeaux
Beaune
Reims
Epernay
ColmarBy country, from the biggest catalogue down
- Italyfrom $17
Francefrom $10
the USAfrom $38
Spainfrom $18
Portugalfrom $19
New Zealandfrom $43
Australiafrom $44
South Africafrom $27
Chilefrom $60
Georgiafrom $14- All the wine countries →
By kind of day, from an hour to a whole one
The newest estate visits on the site.
The newest pours →
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Winery Visit on Parma Hills & Wine Tasting with Food Platter
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Wine tasting under the Stars in the vineyards of Agrigento
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Sedona: Visit 4 Award Winning Vineyards in the Verde Valley
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