I didn’t ever fall in love with the idea of wine by drinking an amazing glass of anything. I didn’t have a mate who had an amazing collection that they wanted to share the love with. I got into wine by going out on holiday to Piemonte in Italy and spending time in an insanely beautiful area with the winemakers who live there. The passion and feeling of what they do with their days is absolutely infectious. As knobby as that sounds, it worked for me!
So when I saw a stat the other day that only 3% of the wine industry is targeted on oenotourism it seemed a bit like someone somewhere was missing a trick. This includes all kinds of things like vineyard tours, chateaux tours and even village tours. You’ve got to remember that, especially in Europe, the villages that spawned amazing wines tend to be utterly stunning places to have a holiday.
At 20h33 we run tours of the villages and vineyards of Bordeaux. It’s been incredibly well received by the punters. It’s not the stuffy “pay €10 and follow the clipboard round” tour. You sit in the 1970s VW combi van, listening to JB cracking jokes, and sup wine with winemakers themselves. That’s what you want, surely?
As more people clock onto the fact that wine regions tend to be stunning geographical areas too, we’re getting more options. Look at the Douro! Portugal’s very own version of heaven on earth now boasts premium hotels (such as the Yeatman and Six Senses) rubbing shoulders alongside campsites for wine-o’s looking to get their feet purple during harvest each year.
Go on a trip like this and you get why wine’s more than just a drink to us geeks!
Cheers
