I've been looking at guided tours in Bordeaux/St. Emillion area and this one popped up. Has anyone taken it? Is €88 too high? I really want a tour--both for info and driver! Here's the link:

www.bordovino.com/st-emilion-bordeaux

This is as they say "Early Days" in planning but I'd appreciate input.

That doesn't sound bad, and they seem to have good reviews on TripAdvisor. Often times, tours like this end up with fewer than the 8 people so it can almost be like a private tour...well worth the money!

Looks good.

Price being for 5 hours + minibus and some apéritif, doesn't seem too much.
2 things I don't 'like'
1. the tour company' name is in English ... why ? targeting englishspeaking mostly ?
2. it seems there is a limit of 2 glasses per chateau being visited. (This being said you visit 5 chateaux)

So : why not and if TA gives good reviews...

The going price for a glass of mediocre wine in Paris is about 5 EU.
So, if you have 2 glasses at each of the 5 chateaux, that comes to approximately 50 EU.
If you took a taxi or bus to each of the 5 chateaux, you would pay well over the 88 EU quoted for the tour.
If you rented a car and got a ticket for drunk driving, you'd pay considerably more than that.
I've never taken this particular tour, but have been on others that cost much more and were geared towards wine merchants and connaisseurs of premium wines.
IMO, I think you should spend the 88 EU and have some fun with a group of like-minded people.

It looks like one of those cruise ship excursions and falls in the same price range.

Of course, you will not get 10 glasses of wine. If you read carefully, they say, they cooperate with 5 chateaux but the tour visits only 2 chateaux where a minimum of 2 wines will be tasted. 2 wines does not mean 2 glasses - they will pour just a few drops into the tasting glasses. You should not get drunk, you should just smell the taste. After these 2 mini-tastings you will be certainly able to drive. In fact, they offer a walk through St. Emilion town after the second tasting.

In total, it does not sound too bad. But for 2 persons, you will pay €176 - this is not peanuts.

I tell you what we had done. We stayed in a little hotel north of Bordeaux (but it does not matter where your hotel is located as long it is in the region).

We asked the hotel concierge about a tour to a winery. She recommend a nearby winery, just 5 km from the hotel, and arranged a date (actually, it was in 15 minutes after our inquiry). We drove with our car to the winery - it turned out to be one of the better Cru Bourgeois Chateaux (Château Tour du Haut Moulin).

The winemaker's daughter, in fluent English, gave us a private tour of the chateau, followed by a tasting. Of course, everything was free of charge, but we bought a couple of boxes for a dirt-cheap price. At home, the wine matured brilliantly.

You can do a similar thing with a rental car or, if you don't want to drive, with a regular taxi. Do not use the meter but negotiate with the taxi driver a fixed price. Or ask the hotel concierge whether she or he can find a driver (usually a young man from the family or something).

Compared to €176, every alternative will be cheap.

You can drink all the wine you want when you come visit us, TDudette! We'll take you to Julien de Savignac for a free wine tasting if you like (we're there every few days anyway), and we can arrange for you to visit the Château Mazivert near Bergerac, owned by our friend Patrick, for free! WAY better than anything in St-Emilion that's geared to tourists.

I honestly wouldn't put too much faith in anything offered in St-Emilion, which IMO is an overpriced hyped-up wine venue. It's a pretty town, for a couple of hours. Beyond that, it's a rip-off. Seriously, email me.

You all are the best. StCirq, I'm visiting you to help with painting! Not to take advantage of your kindness.

But TDudette, there must be wine, and you can do it all just down the road with really nice folks without paying 88 euros. Just sayin'.........

The wine bit in St-Emilion may well be special - who am I to say? But google Julien de Savignac (there are several stores) in Le Bugue. These guys know us really well - they'll do something very special for you, free of charge. It won't involve visiting a vineyard, though, so if that's important stick with your plan.

Of course, you can always do both

We cannot beat StCirq's generous offer.

But just a few insights about wineries in the Bordeaux area.

Perhaps the most famous wine area is the Médoc north of Bordeaux. The wineries here are called "chateaux" and they are castles indeed. Unlike other wine regions (like Bourgogne or Alsace) where you have picturesque villages with many small wineries, these Chateaux are huge and operated factory-like with employed workers rather than by family members. This means, there are no picturesque villages in the Médoc.

However, the Chateaux are spectacular, even if you can just peep through a fence or gate. And you see all the great names: Cos d'Estournel, Mouton, Lafitte, Margaux...

Most of the famous wineries are not open for visitors, because they don't make their business by selling an occasional bottle to a tourist. Some can be visited by appointment only (e.g. Chateau Mouton).

Better for visiting are the ~250 Cru Bourgois wineries. Many of them are still operated by their owner families and most of them make excellent wines which mature faster than the Grand Cru Classées. (Often wine tastings in Bordeaux are disappointing because the young wines are so immature. A great Bordeaux wine needs at least 15 years to mature. Now, I start to drink my Cos d'Estournels and Moutons from 1997.)

The St. Emilion region is totally different. First, St. Emilion is a charming town, albeit overrun by tourists and full of souvenir shops. In St. Emilion you find few large chateaux but more family-run, small wineries. Since St. Emilion use a lot of Merlot (instead of Cabernet Sauvignon which is the main grape in Médoc) the wines mature faster and are often less complex.

Even easier - and good value for money - offer the wines of the "lesser" surrounding regions like Montagne St. Emilion and Côtes du Castillion and Bergerac. There, you can still find bottles of reds for 6 or 8 Euros with great tastes of red berries which are so typical for the Bordeaux region.

I personally also like the wines from the Cahors region where a lot of Malbec is used, making dark wines with tastes of dark cherries and plum.

I wouldn't think 88 euro for a day tour like that myself. I'm sure they are targeting English speakers, or the most common language among non-French, dont' see anything wrong with that. Tourists are the ones who do these kind of things to begin with. English is often the most common language for any day tours I've been on in many countries except for tours for native speakers and tour operators have to be realistic about who their clients are -- I'm sure they aren't Spanish in that location. I imagine Tdudette wanted an English language tour and was searching for that, anyway.

I would hope people aren't drinking 2 glasses of wine at 5 chateaux, that would be extremely unhealthy, among other things.

Traveller1959, I am so with you regarding the "black wine of Cahors." My favorite. Supposed to be the closest thing to what the Romans drank. And it nearly got wiped out by phylloxera - thank goodness a few vines survived!

After a few glasses, I can speak Latin!

Wonderful and thorough info, traveller1959. Thank you.

St. Emillion wine has a special meaning to me so there will be a visit there. For just how long, I'm still gathering info.

You are so nice, StCirq. Now that I know what you like, how about I meet you in Le Bugue on my way to your maison? E-mail to come. "After a few glasses, I can speak Latin!"--

For my 2 cents, 88 euros does not seem bad for full day tour with tastings; as a point of comparison, in September we paid 45 euros each for an English tour at Mouton Rothschild in Medoc which lasted 2 1/2 hours and included their stunning museum; they began featuring fine artists' work on their labels in 1926 and apparently still are doing so (originally the artist would offer a painting for a case of wine). The art was part of the appeal for me. Three vintages were sampled in 5 oz. amounts, portion not taste size. We drove there from Bordeaux and took the more leisurely way back stopping in Blaye, Margaux, St. Julien. Also had a tour scheduled at Chateau Margaux but missed it due to long lunch! While there are thousands of wineries to visit, and we have been to several in the States, France, Spain & Italy, only 5 in Bordeaux are classified premier grand cru. It was a special day.

Thanks, aliced!

Nunc est bibendum, StCirq!

When I followed the link I saw 2 chateau for E88 plus a wander in St E.

Is it good value, no.

Is it a good price compared to others, yes.

You visit a base producer (superiore and reserve mean nothing in this area) and a Classified Growth (means it has an old brand 18?? which may or may not be still of some value) producer, note you may end up tasting the second wine for instance but you may be lucky.

Could you do better on your own, probably, but I depends if you are time rich or poor.

Good news you don't have to drive, do they pick up at your hotel or just dump you out at a central point? Nothing better than being dropped home after a drinking afternoon.

>>after a drinking afternoon<<

These kinds of commercial wine tastings are never drinking afternoons. You will get a thimble only. And, since the wines are fresh and young, they will be rich in tannines and taste for nothing. The main thing of such tours is the tour through the winery, seeing all the equipment and listening to explanations. At the end, you get a tiny bit of liquid and they hope you buy a few bottles or a corkscrew.

A serious Bordeaux tasting that includes 10 or 15 different kinds of wines, older vintages and substantial amounts of liquid is not offered by wineries. A GOOD WINERY DOES NOT HAVE OLD WINES. Such tastings are offered by dealers or by connaisseurs or at trade fairs.

For a Bordeaux drinking experience, a multicourse menu with wine pairings in a regional restaurant is usually a good bet.

Well, if St-Emilion has special meaning for you, I'd say go for it. The price doesn't seem unreasonable to me,and you'll probably learn some interesting details. We can ALSO meet in Le Bugue!