Chianti before lunch, the Douro by boat. One wine day at a time.
Which Tuscan winery run actually pours off the barrel. What a Douro day with two quintas and a river cruise costs. Whether a Champagne pressing house beats a Reims tasting room when you have one afternoon. Reviews of the wine tours you can book, in every wine country there is.
The wine days a first trip gets planned around.
A Tuscan hill run, the Douro by van and boat, tapas poured against Catalan reds, three Cape estates in an afternoon. What each costs, and what the people who booked it say.
- 01The Tuscan hill dayTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano and Pisa on one run out of Florence, with the Chianti lunch in the middle. The day people still talk about a year later.
02The Douro by boatDouro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchTwo quintas, lunch and a river cruise back down the valley. Van out along the ridge road, boat home under the terraces.
03The Catalan tableBarcelona Tapas and Wine Experience Small-Group Walking TourSmall-group tapas crawl through Barcelona with the wine poured to match each plate. Three hours, and dinner is no longer necessary.
04The Cape afternoonWine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesPaarl, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch with three cellar doors in one drive. Somebody else is at the wheel, which is the entire point.
In Italy the wine day is a drive, a lunch, and three glasses nobody planned on.
Compare every Italian wine day →Tuscany sells more day trips than any wine region on earth and they are not the same product. Three kinds of Italian wine day, what boarding each one costs, and which city it leaves from.
Chianti, or the three-town day
Half a day in the hills buys two wineries and a real lunch. The Siena and San Gimignano run costs roughly double and gives you an hour in each town instead. Pick by whether you came for the wine or the view.
A capped cellar tasting
The small-group flights run with a working winemaker and a hard cap on numbers, which is why they close weeks out. Book this one before the flights, not after.
Etna, where the vines grow on lava
Nerello Mascalese off black volcanic sand, tasted on the slope it came from. Most tours pair the vineyards with a walk on the crater field, so leave the sandals at the hotel.
What a day in the vineyards actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by the price of getting in. A good number of the best pours come in under the price of the bottle back home.
Cellar visits, city tasting rooms, a guided flight and the short runs out of Porto and Florence.
The standards: a Chianti minibus with lunch, the Douro river day, a Cape winelands drive.
Private drivers, Rioja and Ribera with a wine expert, and the once-a-trip cellar you tell people about.
Every wine country has one day out that sells out first.
Six countries carry most of the world’s bookable wine days: the Tuscan hills, the Gironde and the Marne, the Douro, Catalonia and Rioja, Napa and Sonoma, and the valleys behind Sydney and Perth. The best day in each.
The tasting is the point. The vineyard is the excuse.
Guided flights, cellars opened by the person who filled them, cheese and tapas poured against the glass. The bookings that need no minibus and still finish in time for dinner.
Portugal put its vineyards on a cliff and then ran a railway underneath them.
Terraces cut into schist above a green river, quintas that still tread by foot in September, and the port lodges facing Porto across the water. Most of the valley is reached by van out along the ridge and boat back down.
The wine days that fill up first, in every region at once.
Open the full wine list →The tours that carry more travellers than anything else on the site, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
Review of a Tuscany day trip from Florence to Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa, and a Chianti winery lunch with practical tips.
From · $114
Read our review →
2
Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch
from $82
3
Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise
from $101
4
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $21
5
Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
from $41
6
Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour
from $45
7
Small-Group Wine Tasting Experience in the Tuscan Countryside
from $107
8
Montserrat Half-Day Tour with Tapas and Gourmet Wines
from $55
France sells you the cellar, not the view. Book accordingly.
Bordeaux runs on château appointments, Champagne on pressing-house tours, Burgundy on climats nobody can pronounce. Paris is where you taste all three without leaving the arrondissement.
All of France, cellar by cellar →
Three pours you cannot get anywhere else.
Vineyards grow on every continent. Schist terraces you leave by river boat, a hop-on tram between estates in a mountain bowl, and vines rooted in the ash of a live volcano do not.
Terraces Cut by Hand
The valley was terraced by hand across three centuries, dry stone wall by dry stone wall, on slopes no tractor will hold. Harvest still comes down in baskets and some of it is still trodden by foot in granite lagares. The day trips drive out along the ridge road and come back by boat, which is the right way round: the terraces only make sense from the water.
- 1Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,061 reviews
- 2Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 12,920 reviews
- 3Douro Valley with Winery Lunch, Tastings & Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 7,002 reviews
The Franschhoek Tram
Franschhoek sits in a valley closed on three sides by rock, with the estates strung along one road, so somebody laid a tram line down it. You buy a loop rather than a tour, hop off at whichever cellar door looks busy and pick the next tram up an hour later. It is the one wine region on earth where the transport is the itinerary.
- 1Wine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineries★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,940 reviews
- 2Franschhoek Wine Tram Hop-on Hop-off★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,972 reviews
- 3Full-Day Winelands Tour with Wine Tastings & Food★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,288 reviews
Etna and Vesuvius
Italy has two working volcanoes with vineyards on them. Etna’s northern face grows Nerello Mascalese between old lava flows at eight hundred metres, some of it on ungrafted rootstock the phylloxera never reached. Vesuvius grows Lacryma Christi on the slopes above Pompeii. Black sand tastes nothing like the same grape from the flat, and the growers will tell you which eruption made their particular field.
- 1Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius with Lunch and Wine Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,454 reviews
- 2Etna, Wine and Alcantara Tour – From Taormina★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 464 reviews
- 3Guided Etna Wine Tasting Half-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 444 reviews
Nobody drives after a wine tasting. Build the day around that.
Four things decide a tasting day and none of them are the wine. Somebody has to drive, which is why the minibus runs cost more and earn it. Tasting fees are waived against a purchase at some cellar doors and not at others. Harvest, through September and October, is the best time to go and the hardest to book. And a cellar cut into rock sits at fifteen degrees whatever the forecast says.
Four wine bookings that will not wait for you.
Most tastings can be arranged the night before from a hotel bar. These four run on harvest calendars, capped tables and cellar doors that shut for lunch.
- 01Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchThe river boats keep a fixed timetable and the better quintas take a set number of visitors a day. Through the September harvest the good runs are gone months ahead.
- 02French Wine Tasting Class with SommelierA sommelier-led flight is a seat at a table rather than a room to wander. The tables are small and most houses hold one sitting a day.
- 03Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine TastingThe hill wineries close their cellar door over lunch and take only booked groups in the afternoon. Arrive unannounced and you are admiring the gate.
- 04Franschhoek Wine Tram Hop-on Hop-offThe Franschhoek tram runs one loop on one timetable, and the hop-on tickets for a Saturday go before the week has started.
Porto to Bordeaux: the wine run most people do first.
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