Every wine region has a best day out. This is which one.
Whether the Chianti minibus beats hiring a car. What a Douro quinta lunch really costs. Which Bordeaux château lets you in without a reservation. Reviews of the wine tours and tastings you can book, region by region.
Poured today
Douro Valley
Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $101
Chianti
Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $41
Tuscan hills
Small-Group Wine Tasting Experience in the Tuscan Countryside
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $107
Four wine days that talk everyone else into going.
One in Portugal, one in Tuscany, one an hour out of Barcelona and one over the Golden Gate. What each pour costs and what the people who booked it say.
01The river dayDouro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchTwo quintas, lunch on a terrace and an hour on the water between them. The day Porto exists to sell you.
02The Tuscan runTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano and a Chianti estate on one minibus. Long, and nobody ever regrets it.
03The short escapeMontserrat Half-Day Tour with Tapas and Gourmet WinesAn hour out of Barcelona, a mountain monastery and a cellar under it. Back in the city for dinner.
04The California oneNapa and Sonoma Wine Country Full-Day Tour from San FranciscoNapa and Sonoma in a day from San Francisco, with the tasting fees folded in so nothing surprises you.
Six countries that do wine tourism better than anyone.
Tuscany and the Veneto. Port lodges and the Douro terraces. Bordeaux châteaux and Champagne chalk. Rioja and Priorat. Napa, Sonoma and the Finger Lakes. Barossa, Yarra and Margaret River. Start with a country, then pick the day.
Italy sells four different wine days. Pick the one you actually want.
Almost every Italian wine tour starts in Florence or Rome and ends in somebody's cellar. The difference is how much of the day is driving, how much is drinking, and whether lunch is included or an afterthought.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
The Chianti classicTwo estates between Florence and Siena, lunch at the second.
Just the tastingTwo hours, a flight of five, no minibus and no whole day gone.
Into the working wineryBarrel room, bottling line, the grower doing the pouring.
The long day outHill towns and vineyards, dawn pickup, back after dark.
All 547 Italian wine days →
The wine tours more travellers book than any others.
Everything we have poured over →Across every region on the site, these are the ones that sell out first, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Cheese & Wine
Spend one hour aboard a covered, fully electric saloon boat with an English-speaking skipper and hostess. You’ll pass the Skinny Bridge, Golden Bend, Jordaan, Old Harbor, Anne Frank House, and Red Light District. Choose the basic cruise or add unlimited Dutch cheese, wine, beer, and soda. Recent guides have included Kevin, Arnoud, Kirsten, and Omri.
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
A tasting is the cheapest way into a wine region.
No coach, no full day, no designated driver argument. Walk into a cellar, pay for a flight, learn what the region actually tastes like, and be back out in ninety minutes. These are the ones worth walking into.
Portugal pours the best value in Europe, and knows it.
Port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia charge less for a flight of tawnies than a glass costs in Paris. Upriver the Douro terraces are a UNESCO landscape you can eat lunch in. Book the river day; do the lodges the afternoon you arrive.
France makes you book ahead. Every region, every time.
Bordeaux châteaux take reservations and mean it. Champagne houses run tours on the hour and fill weeks out. Burgundy is small growers who answer the door themselves. None of it works as a walk-up, which is exactly why an organised half-day earns its money here.
All wine days in France →
What wine tours actually cost, from a single flight to a private day.
Every tour on the site sorted by price. Plenty of the best mornings in wine country cost less than the bottle you would bring home.
Cellar-door flights, port lodge tastings, city wine bars and the two-hour walk-in.
The standard day out: minibus, two or three estates, lunch somewhere with a view.
Private drivers, grand cru châteaux and the harvest lunches worth flying for.
Three wine experiences that exist almost nowhere else.
Tasting rooms are everywhere. Cellars cut into volcanic rock, lodges that age tawny for forty years, and a mountain range of estates twenty minutes from a city centre are not.
The Port Lodges
Across the river from Porto, a row of warehouses has been ageing fortified wine since the eighteenth century, because the cellars there stay cooler than the vineyards two hours upstream. A lodge tour is twenty minutes of history and then a flight of white, ruby, tawny and vintage poured side by side, which is the only way anybody ever works out which one they like.
- 1Live Fado Show with Glass of Port Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,498 reviews
- 2Bridges Cruise & Sunset & Port Wine Cellar Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 4,180 reviews
- 3Fado & Port Wine in Traditional Portuguese Music Shop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,906 reviews
Wine Off Volcanic Rock
Vines growing on lava behave differently: the soil drains hard, the nights are cold and the roots go deep, and the wine comes out sharp and smoky in a way nothing else quite manages. Etna estates sit at eight hundred metres on the north face, most of them small, most of them family-run, and nearly all of them expecting you to have called first.
- 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
The Cape Winelands
Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl sit in a bowl of mountains barely an hour from the city, which makes this the easiest serious wine region on earth to reach without planning. Estates here run on Cape Dutch gables and oak avenues, tastings cost a fraction of what Europe charges, and several of them do the cheese board better than the wine.
- 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
Four wine bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of a wine trip can be arranged over breakfast. These four cannot: they run on harvest dates, house tour timetables and estates that only take a dozen people a day.
- 01Guided Tour of Champagne Cellar with TastingsThe houses run guided cellar visits on a fixed timetable with a cap on each one, and the English-language slots go first.
- 02Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchThe valley is two hours upriver from Porto and the good tours leave once, early. Miss the pickup and the day is gone.
- 03Afternoon Saint-Emilion Wine Tasting & snackBordeaux châteaux admit visitors by appointment only, and the classified estates take a handful a day. Turning up at the gate gets you a photograph of the gate.
- 04Small-Group Brunello di Montalcino Wine-Tasting Trip from SienaMontalcino estates take a dozen visitors a day between them and the small-group trips out of Siena leave once. Nothing about it is walk-up.
Somebody has to drive, and other things nobody mentions.
Wine country is rural, tastings add up faster than you think, and the police in France, Italy and Spain are not relaxed about it. Most estates close on Sundays and through August. Harvest is the best time to visit and the worst time to get a booking. The fix is usually the same: let somebody else drive, or stay in the city and taste there.
Where the minibus picks you up
By kind of day — flight, estate, cellar or coach
Douro, Chianti, Bordeaux, Rioja, Napa, Barossa: the six worth the flight.
Napa & Sonoma
AustraliaFreshly poured: the reviews just added.
The rest of the fresh pours, in order →
Full Day Small Group Wine Tour Cape Town and Stellenbosch
Read our review →
Private Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl Wine Tour
Read our review →
Drumstruck at Silvermist. Live African Drum Show & Wine tasting
Read our review →
Constantia Wine Walk Storytelling Vineyard Tour with Lunch
Read our review →
Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain & Wine Tasting Tour
Read our review →
Cruise and Dine Dinner / Cape Town: Sunset Champagne Cruise and 3-Course Dinner
Read our review →
Cape Winelands Private Tour to Stellenbosch and Franschhoek
Read our review →
Cape Town Peninsula Day Tour ( Cape Point/Boulders/Wine Tasting)
Read our review →