A morning in the rows, an hour in the cellar, lunch under the pergola.
Which Chianti estates still open the gate to visitors. What a quinta charges for lunch above the Douro. Whether the Cape needs a driver, and how many wineries a day really holds. Reviews of the vineyard and winery visits you can book.
Douro Valley with Two Winery, Boat Trip and Lunch From PortoFour estate days that carry more visitors than anything else in wine country.
Chianti out of Florence, the Douro terraces above the river, four cellar doors on a Michigan peninsula, three valleys behind Cape Town. What each costs, and what the people who went say.
01The Tuscan oneTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano and Pisa strung around a long lunch at a Chianti estate. The day nearly everybody books first.
02The river dayDouro Valley with Winery Lunch, Tastings & CruiseTwo quintas above the Douro, tastings on terraces cut into schist, and the way home by boat instead of the road.
03The peninsula run5-Hour Traverse City Wine Tour: 4 Wineries on Old Mission PeninsulaFour cellar doors on Old Mission Peninsula in five hours, with somebody else driving between them.
04The Cape dayWine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesPaarl, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch in one run, three estates, mountains behind every tasting bench.
In Italy the vineyard visit is a long lunch that happens to have vines around it.
Three shapes an Italian estate day takes, what it costs to walk through the gate, and which city each one leaves from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
Chianti out of FlorenceTwo or three estates, tastings between them, lunch at the last one.
Inside the wineryThe fermenting hall and the barrel room, with the winemaker doing the talking.
Every Italian estatePiedmont, Etna, Valpolicella and the whole of the Tuscan hills.
All 154 Italian estate days →
Six wine countries, and the estate day worth building a trip around in each.
Tuscan hill roads and a lunch that runs to four hours. Schist terraces above the Douro. Bodegas in Rioja that look like galleries. Bordeaux châteaux that finally let visitors through the gate. Napa and Sonoma inside one day. Three valleys behind Table Mountain.
A winery visit is three rooms, a view, and a bench with five glasses on it.
Most of them run the same shape: the rows first, then the fermenting hall, then the cold dark of the barrel cellar, then somewhere to sit down. What changes is how long you get, whether lunch is part of it, and how many estates the driver fits into the day.
The cellar is the cold half of an estate visit, and usually the better half.
Down the steps the temperature drops ten degrees and the noise stops. Port lodges facing Porto across the river, chalk tunnels under Reims, a schist cave in the Douro with forty thousand bottles lying in the dark.
The most-booked vineyard and winery visits on the site.
Every estate visit we have reviewed →One list, every wine country, ordered by how many people actually turn up. What earns each visit its place is written underneath it.
1
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
Travel by air-conditioned coach from Florence to Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa, and a Chianti winery. You’ll tour Siena Cathedral, enjoy free time in three towns, and can add a farmhouse lunch with four wine tastings and a Leaning Tower climb.
From · $114
Read our review →
2
Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
from $41
3
Douro Valley with Winery Lunch, Tastings & Cruise
from $99
4
2 Wine Regions, Farm-to-Table Lunch & Boat
from $94
5
Montserrat, Cogwheel, Black Madonna & Winery Tour
from $55
6
Montserrat with Black Madonna & Medieval Winery with Tapas/Lunch
from $65
7
Napa and Sonoma Wine Country Full-Day Tour from San Francisco
from $165
8
Cálem Cellar Tour, Interactive Museum & Wine Tasting
from $23
The Douro is a river with terraces cut into both banks by hand.
Two thousand years of men stacking schist walls, and the result is the steepest working vineyard on earth. Nothing here is mechanised because nothing can be. Most visits leave Porto around eight, take in two quintas, and come back down the water instead of the road.
Every Douro day →
What a day at a winery costs, from cellar door to private château.
Every visit on the site grouped by price. A flight at the cellar door often costs less than the taxi out to it; a private day with a driver and a table booked for four hours is a different order of thing.
Cellar-door flights, an hour underground at a port lodge, the walk-in visits you can arrange the night before.
The standard day out: two or three estates, somebody else driving, and lunch somewhere with a view down the valley.
Private guides, small estates that open the good bottles, helicopters over the Cape and tables held all afternoon.
Three vineyards that could not be anywhere else.
Vines grow on every habitable continent. Terraces built by hand out of slate, wine buried in clay under a courtyard floor and hundred-year-old vines rooted in black lava are not portable.
The Douro Terraces
The valley walls run to forty-five degrees, so every row of vines sits on a wall built by hand out of the slate it stands on. Some of those walls are four hundred years old and still holding. There is no machine that can work ground like this, which is why the fruit still comes down the hill on somebody’s back at the end of September.
- 1Douro Valley with Winery Lunch, Tastings & Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 7,002 reviews
- 2Douro Valley Tour: 2 Vineyard Visits, River Cruise, Winery Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,542 reviews
- 3Douro Valley with Two Winery, Boat Trip and Lunch From Porto★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,634 reviews
Kakheti and the Qvevri
Georgians ferment in egg-shaped clay jars buried to the neck in the ground, and have done for eight thousand years without a break. A qvevri is sealed with a stone lid and a layer of earth and left through the winter. When a family lifts one for guests in spring, the smell that comes up out of the floor is most of the reason to make the drive from Tbilisi.
- 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
The Slopes of Etna
Etna’s vineyards sit between six hundred and a thousand metres on ground that is crushed lava, planted with ungrafted vines a century old because phylloxera never got a hold in sand. The mountain is still active, the harvest runs into November, and from the tasting bench on a clear morning you can see the Ionian.
- 1Private 6-Hour Tour of Three Etna Wineries with food&wine tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 417 reviews
- 2Private tour of Etna and Winery Visit with Food and Wine Tasting from Taormina★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 221 reviews
- 3Mount Vesuvius: Vineyard Tour with Wine Tasting and Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 193 reviews
Four vineyard bookings that will not wait for you.
Most cellar doors will take a walk-in on a Tuesday in March. These four run on appointment books, one seating a day and weather that gets a vote.
- 01Champagne Day Trip with 6 Tastings, Reims and Winery from ParisThe houses at Reims and Épernay run visits by appointment in fixed slots, and the cellars shut to visitors for the vintage.
- 02Quinta da Regaleira Skip-the-Ticket-Line Entry & AudioguideDouro quintas are family-sized. Lunch is cooked for a set number, the road in is single track, and there is no second sitting.
- 03Gold Coast Hot Air Balloon + Winery Breakfast + Return TransfersA balloon over the vines flies at first light or not at all, and the pilot cancels on wind. Book the first morning and keep the next one spare.
- 04Bridges Cruise & Sunset & Port Wine Cellar OptionA tasting in the rows at sunset works for about an hour, so the estate runs one seating and the tables go early.
The only real problem with a tasting day is the drive home.
Wine country is rural by definition. The good estates sit twenty minutes apart down lanes with no pavement, and everyone in the car wants to taste. That is why almost everything here comes with somebody else at the wheel, and why the minibus, the river boat and the bike have quietly taken the day over.
By country - old world and new
By kind of day - cellar, table, saddle or river
Florence, Chianti, Siena, Montepulciano: the Tuscan wine week almost everybody does first.
Siena
Montepulciano
VeronaThe newest estate and cellar reviews.
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Assisi: Wine tasting, gourmet pairing, walk in the vineyards
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