Wine Travel Guides. Private wine tours
Comprehensive travel guides for visiting wine regions
"I have just returned from a 5-day holiday in Bordeaux - the Guides are excellent and a great addition to the pleasures of the visit."
Roger Manley, Gold Subscriber
Wine Travel Guides provide all the information that the independent traveller needs for an enjoyable private wine tour. The introductions to each guide can be read for free from the wine regions page and set the tone. Below we explain more about what you will find in each wine travel guide.
The travel guides are written by some of the finest wine and travel writers with the inside knowledge on their region They know not only the wines of their areas, but also the best restaurants, hotels and places to visit - all you need for a great wine tour.
or register for a free sample wine travel guide.
What the Guides look like: All the Guides are available to download and to print out in PDF format as a full page document (A4 or North American letter format) – the Guides vary in length from 10 – 18 pages. Gold subscribers can view all the Guides on-line, which has the advantage of being able to use the interactive maps and tourist information. To see a sample in both formats, register now.
Where the Guides cover: Guides are currently available for all major French wine regions as well as Tuscany (Italy) and Rioja (Spain). France is divided into conventional wine regions and then further into micro-regions. Each Guide covers one micro-region, which might be a wine district such as: Saint Emilion (Bordeaux) or Côte de Beaune (Burgundy); a loose geographic area like The Valleys of the Tarn and Lot (South West) or Inland Provence; or centred on important towns such as Epernay (Champagne) or Narbonne (Languedoc Roussillon). Wine Travel Guides will be added for other wine countries in the future.
Recommendations: Here you will find the real inside knowledge with the contributor’s personal recommendations. Every guide includes:
Each recommendation has full contact details (including web links where relevant) and is mapped accurately on our interactive Michelin maps. We also give GPS coordinates so that you can put these into your SatNav and find even the most remote wine producer or restaurant.
The Guides also include some or all of the following:
Unique Interactive Maps: Each Guide includes an extract from a Michelin road map. For Gold subscribers, detailed, interactive Michelin road maps showing all the wine producers, places to stay and eat, shops and attractions can be accessed directly from the Guide. You can print out the maps and change the scale to suit and you can also print out driving directions.
Basic Information: Each wine travel guide lists contact details and websites for the main tourist offices and wine information organisations for each micro-region. We provide a wine aide-memoir giving a short description of the geography (climate/soil) as well as the main grapes, appellations and wine styles. In addition, we list local food specialities, and highlight important towns and villages.
Itineraries: If you are new to the region, or can’t decide where to go, you can follow our ‘Ideal Itineraries’ for an excellent one or two-day wine tour.
Green Guides Tourist Information: For Gold subscribers there is full access to the famous Michelin Green Guides. These are accessed from each Guide and will give you local points of interest including churches, châteaux, archaeological sites, and numerous other sites of interest.