grape escapes - the bordeaux wine tour specialist
GRAPE ESCAPES – BESPOKE INDEPENDENT WINE TASTING TOURS
Wine Tasting Tours, Holidays and Trips
Grape Escapes is a specialist European wine tour operator, offering a broad range of wine tasting tours and trips to the vineyards in the main French wine regions: Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, The Rhône and The Loire and selected regions in Spain and Italy.
If you want to have an unforgettable trip for your group but don’t want the hassle of organising it, then why not let us help? At Grape Escapes, we specialise in creating the ideal tour to match your group’s requirements and budget.
We have organised birthday trips, hen and stag weekends and trips for many other groups. From wine clubs to rotary clubs, from sports and social clubs to car clubs, we can create a bespoke programme to suit your requirements. Anything from a classic car rally in Champagne to a week touring the best wineries in several wine regions in France, we have the contacts to ensure that the whole of your group have an enjoyable break.
We recently arranged a self-drive trip to the Loire Valley for Hannah and friends, who wanted to explore the region in their classic cars whilst spending some time sampling the region’s wines.
The group drove from Jersey to the Loire Valley, taking the ferry to St Malo. They then checked into the elegant Château de Beaulieu. After spending the remainder of the day relaxing at the hotel, we recommended a nearby restaurant and reserved them a table for dinner. After breakfast, an English-speaking guide met the group at the Château and accompanied them on a tour of the region in a chauffeured mini-coach.
Hannah and her friends firstly visited Langlois Château, just outside Saumur. This prestigious house is under the same ownership as Bollinger and produces wines along the length of the Loire Valley. The visit here included a short ‘classroom’ session to look at the geology of the Loire valley and why the different styles of wine are produced. The group then enjoyed a tour of the extensive tufa stone cellars built into the side of the valley which concluded with tastings of a variety of wines from across the region including sparkling wines.
Lunch was then served in a troglodytic cave near Saumur, where our guests were served the local speciality, fouée. This traditional dish consists of hot bread rolls that are heated in an open oven, accompanied by various pâtés, such as rillettes and mojettes.
On the way back to the Château, the group stopped in the town of Chinon, where the day ended with a tour to the best wine producer in the Chinon appellation (producer of arguably the best red wine in the Loire) for a visit to their vineyards and cuverie before tastings of red wines from several of their different terroirs. Hannah and her friends spent a relaxing evening dining in the Château’s gourmet restaurant.
After breakfast, we arranged for the group to spend the third day exploring the region in their cars. They firstly visited Château de Chenonceau, where they had time to wander around the formal garden and park. Chenonceau is not only remarkable for its architecture and history but also for the fine quality of its collections as can be seen from the inside visit: Renaissance furniture, a vast ensemble of 16th and 17th Century tapestries and a great number of masterpieces.
In the afternoon, the group enjoyed a visit to Château Villlandry, famous for its gardens and terraces, which are laid out on three levels: a decorative vegetable garden with surprising harmony of colour; a garden of flowers and box-tree and a large water garden. These gardens are completed by a maze called "le Jardin des Simples."
After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, Hannah and her friends checked out of the Château and drove back to Jersey.
For a quotation for your group or a copy of our group trips brochure, please call us on 08456 430860 or e-mail us at info@grapeescapes.net.