willtowrite

Can anyone recommend a good Rhone wine tour covering Chateauneuf-du-Pape
and Gigondas?

My husband and I are visiting Avignon, Provence in October. We both like wine but are no experts. We would like a tour that takes us to some interesting & traditional wineries where we can learn about the region’s wines. We would also like to improve our understanding of wine, in general.

We have done several tours in Napa & Champagne which were way too commercial. We are looking for something a bit more intimate. Any ideas?

macanimals

Two suggestions and both require transportation. Assuming you will have a car:

1. Make contact with Chateau de Beaucastel--www.Beaucastel.com They can arrange a tour of their premise, winery and vineyards as well as a tasting of their wine. Its a very sincere and enthusiastic presentation and will be subject to their staffing and other appointments. I arranged a few days ahead by phone--very enlightening--about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs.

2. Arrange to visit the village of Gigondas. I suppose tours can be arranged in the village but the highlight is the "community" tasting room in town for all the appellation's wineries. The tastings are free and very popular but you should know what you want as they are very reticent to suggest or direct you (they don't want to play favorites). Incredible variety of product.

Good luck and have fun.
Paul

Rumseydog

A couple of vendors have been recommended in previous posts on Fodors. I don't have any personal experience with either firm, but they appear to offer a good choice of wine tours.

Avignon Wine Tour
http://www.avignon-wine-tour.com/pres.html

Wine Safari
http://www.avignon-wine-tour.com/pres.html

Rumseydog

Sorry,

Here's the correct URL for Wine Safari:
http://www.winesafari.net/uk/accueiluk.htm

Images2

I'm going to be in this area next week and have contacted Oliver at www.wine-uncovered.com. He has many tours available at reasonable prices. He quickly responds to e-mails.

I also contacted Chateau de Beaucastel twice and they couldn't accommodate us for a tour.

Enjoy your trip!

carolynk

I second the recommendation for Wine Safari--we had a great tour with Mike last May, just the two of us in his minivan. He's very knowledgeable, has great contacts, and was a goldmine of information. And we thought the price was reasonable. We were staying in Gigondas (where he picked us up), but I'm pretty sure he'd pick up in Avignon.

Images2

While I was looking at recommended Domaines to visit I noticed that Domaine du Mourchon near Seguret has a free-guided Vineyard tour and wine tasting in English, every Wednesday starting in April- end September, at 5 p.m. Details are on their web site.

Langcraft

To be honest I don't know of any specific Chateauneuf or Gigondas vintners. However, if you cross the Rhone river, you'll be in the provence of Gard, where you can visit the vineyards of Tavel, famous for its' Rose. You can also visit Lirac, famous for its' reds and whites. There are several places to stop off for degustations throughout the area. Tavel and Lirac are only 20 mins from Avignon.. You may wish to avail yourself of these little known, but delightful wines and wine areas

getcarter

If you are looking for wineries off the beaten path then I would go for Olivier Hickman (www.wine-uncovered.com) as a guide. He works with some fantastic estates that are truly hidden gems. He researches the estates he visits which allows to do all the guiding himself (vineyards and wineries) – he even serves up the tasting at each estate. We chose him for this reason because we had been on wine tours with other guides in the same area (previous visits) who essentially seemed to be wine-taxi services, taking us to very touristy wine estates.

He supplied us with some excellent information cards giving details about all the wines we tasted. He was extremely knowledgeable and seemed to have a fantastic ability to communicate wine in terms we could understand. I learnt more about wine from Olivier than I had done in all of my previous wine-drinking years!

nametaken

Landcraft knows his stuff. Tavel and Lirac offer great wines and many tasting opportunites. Chateunef-du-Pape and Gigondas also have several tasting co-ops. All you need is a map and a car to drive to these wonderful places. Enjoy. My husband and I are staying in the Gard(across the river from Avignon) and hope to also explore the olives grown here.

craggy

Aha! I might be the man to help here - I second (or is third?) www.wine-uncovered.com.

Last fall we toured with BOTH Wine Safari and then with Wine Uncovered – sorry, we are wine crazy! Mike from Wine Safari is a lovely guy but we were disappointed that we didn’t really get in amongst the vines – the vineyard scenery is so stunning in Provence. We saw the vineyards from the inside of his van. We also only to visited one estate as we spent a lot of time on the road collecting and dropping off the other guests.

I have to say that our Wine Uncovered tour was far superior - we went to two excellent but very different estates and we spent a nice period of time in the vines of the producers. His speciality is explaining how “Terroir” determines the flavours of the wines – absolutely fascinating. The wine information cards he gave us were a classy bonus – as was the cheese we had with the wines! Fresh local goats cheese with a Cote du Rhone white wine was an amazing taste discovery.

Langcraft

If you happen to need a place to stay near Avignon, I would recommend LE PONT DU ROY:http://www.hotelpontduroy.fr/scr/p0.php.

A father and son team...Dad is the manager, Son is the chef. Lovely place set in the vineyards of Tavel, 20 mins from Avignon

I was there for 4 days in Sept 2006. Chef went to the market in Avignon daily and bought whatever looked good at the market.. We had duck, scallops and lamb. Delicious!!

A very laid back and friendly place...

bellamiyagi

Wines of the Vaucluse..and Cotes de Luberon and Ventoux are excellent...The Orange area is great for wine too...yummy! Remember you must check your wine in your luggage to return it via airplanes.