Florence: the Chianti wineries run★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $41
Cape Town: a full day through the Winelands★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · from $121
Queenstown: four cellar doors and lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $164
Tbilisi: ten tastings out in Kakheti★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $18 Somewhere it is wine o’clock. We reviewed the trip.
What a Chianti afternoon really costs, whether the Douro boat is worth the extra hour, which Cape estates pour on a Sunday. Every wine tour and tasting worth a day of your holiday, priced and timed.
Chianti, the Douro, the Cape and one ticket in Bordeaux.
Four bookings that turn a holiday into a wine trip. What each pours, what it costs, and what the people who went say about it.
- 01The Tuscan afternoonChianti Wineries Tour with Wine TastingTwo or three Chianti estates in one run out of Florence, tasting through Sangiovese with something to eat at each stop.
02The Douro dayComplete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River CruiseTerraces cut into schist, two quintas, lunch, and the stretch of river you only see from the boat.
03The Cape runWine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesPaarl, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch in a day. Three valleys, three styles, and the shortest drive between great estates anywhere.
04The Bordeaux hourCité du Vin Entry Ticket and Wine TastingCité du Vin plus a glass on the eighth floor. The cheapest way to work out what you actually like before you book a château.
Italy pours more of these days out than anywhere else. Pick your grape.
Sangiovese in the hills south of Florence, Nebbiolo up north, Glera on the Prosecco slopes, volcanic reds on Etna. Three shapes of Italian wine day, what boarding each one costs, and where it runs from.
A handful of countries pour most of the world’s cellar doors. Start with one.
Tuscan hills an hour from a Renaissance city, terraces above a Portuguese river, Rioja and cava within a train ride, Cape valleys under a mountain, and the Yarra a morning out of Melbourne. Six places to point a wine trip at.
The best hour of a wine tour usually happens underground.
Barrel halls cut into limestone, port lodges stacked to the roof at Gaia, chalk cellars thirty metres under Reims. A tasting room shows you the labels; the cellar shows you why the bottle costs what it costs.
A tasting, a winery run, or a table where the wine arrives with food.
Three ways to spend the afternoon. A flight poured by someone who can explain it, a drive out to the estates that made it, or a long table where every glass lands next to the thing it was grown for.
The wine days more travellers book than any other.
Every wine tour we have reviewed →Tuscan estate runs, Douro boats, Cape valleys and Barcelona’s tapas-and-wine tables. These are the ones that go before the good weather does.
1
Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Cheese & Wine
Spend one hour on a covered, fully electric Amsterdam canal boat with an English-speaking skipper and hostess. See the Skinny Bridge, Golden Bend, Anne Frank House, Old Harbor, and Jordaan. Choose the basic cruise or add unlimited Dutch cheese, wine, beer, and soda.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Evening Cruise with Optional Wine and Snacks
from $23
3
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
from $114
4
Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch
from $82
5
Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise
from $101
6
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $21
7
Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
from $41
8
Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour
from $45
Porto is a port city with a wine valley bolted to the back of it.
Cross the bridge to Gaia and the lodges are lined up along the water, forty minutes of barrels and a tawny at the end. The valley itself is ninety minutes upriver, and the vineyard terraces there are old enough to be a UNESCO site.
Every Douro and Porto day →
France sells the châteaux. The good French afternoons are in the villages behind them.
Saint-Émilion is a morning from Bordeaux and pours better than its price suggests. Reims and Épernay are ninety minutes from Paris on a fast train, and the chalk cellars underneath them are the coldest hour of any wine trip.
- 1Authentic Parisian Gourmet Food Tour with 10 Local Dishes & Winesfrom $102
- 2Loire Valley Castles Day Trip from Paris with Complementary Winefrom $149
- 3Cité du Vin Entry Ticket and Wine Tastingfrom $27
What an afternoon of wine actually costs, from a $10 pour up.
Every tasting and tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. Plenty of the best sessions cost less than the bottle you would have bought at home.
Cellar-door flights, port lodges, city tasting rooms and the short hop out to one estate.
The full day: two or three estates, a driver, and lunch somewhere with a view of the rows.
Private guides, grand-cru tables and the harvest-week trips that justify the flight.
Three wine regions that grew up strange, and are worth the detour.
Rows on a flat plain exist everywhere. Terraces hacked out of schist, clay eggs buried in a courtyard and vines coiled into baskets against the wind do not.
The Douro terraces
The slopes above the river are schist, too steep and too stony to plough, so growers cut them into stone-walled shelves by hand and have kept doing it since the eighteenth century. It is the oldest demarcated wine region on earth. Harvest is still largely done on foot, because nothing with wheels gets up there.
- 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
Qvevri, buried in the yard
Georgians ferment in clay vessels sunk to the neck in the ground, skins and all, which is where the amber wine everyone has started ordering comes from. The method is around eight thousand years old and still in daily use in Kakheti, where a tasting means a cellar, a long table and more toasts than you planned on.
- 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
Vines coiled into baskets
The wind on Santorini would strip an ordinary trellis, so the vines are trained into low woven baskets that sit on the ground and shelter the fruit inside them. The soil is pumice, the roots are ungrafted, and the Assyrtiko that comes out of it tastes like nothing else in the Mediterranean.
- 1Top Sights Day Trip, Wine Tasting, & Oia Sunset★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,492 reviews
- 2Santorini Wine Adventure with 12 Wine Tastings, Tapas and Sunset★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,715 reviews
- 3Santorini Wine Stories: Sunset Tour with Tasting & Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,285 reviews
Four wine bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most tastings can be arranged the night before. These cannot: small estates take a handful of visitors a day, harvest weeks fill months out, and the good driver in every valley is booked by the people who already know the valley.
- 01Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchThe quintas cap their lunch tables, and the days that include one go first through September and October.
- 02Afternoon Saint-Emilion Wine Tasting & snackSaint-Émilion’s châteaux receive by appointment in small groups. Turn up without one and you are looking at the gates.
- 03Wine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesThe Cape harvest runs February to April and the estates are working. Tasting slots and the wine tram both go early.
- 04Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine TastingsKakheti’s cellars are family houses, not visitor centres. The table is set for a fixed number and there is no second sitting.
Harvest is the best time to visit a winery and the hardest to get into.
September and October in Europe, February to April in the Cape and the Yarra: the fruit is coming in, the cellars smell of it, and half the staff are on the crush pad rather than the tasting bar. Book those weeks early, or go in spring, when the estates are quiet and the same tour costs less.
By place — the cities you can taste out of
Porto to Bordeaux: the run most people do before they get serious.
MadridThe newest wine tours and tastings on the site.
The rest of the new ones →
Argostoli: Melissani & Drogarati Cave Tour with Wine Tasting
Read our review →
Argostoli: Full-Day Boat Trip with Lunch & Wine
Read our review →
Apulia: Guided Wine Tasting with Local Appetizers
Read our review →
Jerez de la Frontera: Sherry Winery Tour with Tasting
Read our review →
