Arblaster & Clarke was launched in Spring 1987 as a new concept in Wine Tours.

Initially just Champagne Weekends were operated, then more short, fun, good value tours with a serious wine content were added such as "Sauvignon & Chardonnay" - The Eastern Loire & Chablis.

There were several established Wine Tours firms, but we were keen to make our mark, we had the energy and the new ideas, and, we were passionately determined to succeed.

Our first longer wine tour was Portugal. This set the pattern of our early tours, - intensively researched, personally led, meeting the rising star winemakers, (who are pretty well known now), such as Peter Bright, Luis Pato and David Baverstock.

Other new tours included Beaujolais, concentrating on the crus such as Fleurie, Morgon and Moulin a Vent.

We expanded our tours considerably this year with our first tours to Burgundy, Alsace & Mosel, the Loire, and Southern Champagne. The Alsace & Mosel tour in particular was ground breaking. Visits in the Mosel & Alsace as well as Hugel and Egon Muller, visits included Dr Loosen, Rolly Gassmann & Marcel Deiss - no surprises then you might think - but look at the date.

Of course there were plenty more Champagne Tours and another Portugal tour.

Everything was going very well. The clients seemed to love our tours and many travelled more than once a year. So we needed to add new destinations as quickly as possible.

This year we introduced Bordeaux, California, Rioja & Northern Spain, Cava & Penedes, The Central Loire and Self-drive tours.

We were a very small team and were pretty busy.

1991 was the first Gulf War year and the start of a recession which hit the travel industry very hard. It was a tough year, but A&C with it's emphasis on high quality and good value, we emerged stronger and as the largest player in the Wine Tours scene.

A couple of new destinations this year were: Tuscany and the Rhone.

Growth seemed pretty unlikely this year, as the world-wide recession deepened, but our regular clients travelled as always. We kept our costs and prices down, and we introduced our first longer tour by coach: Bordeaux and the Loire. We also explored several new areas with a view to adding them in the future.

We also featured Gourmet & Cookery tours for the first time.

This was a year of confident expansion. A&C was very clearly seen as "the Market leader" (& had in fact been so since early 1991, a position we still hold, world-wide).

Our team of Wine Guides expanded considerably this year to include for the first time Derek Smedley MW, Maggie McNie MW and David Gleave MW (as well as Monica Murphy, Lance Foyster MW and Tim Clarke).

New tours: Champagne Extra, Madeira and Northern Italy.

This year the programme matured considerably. There were three tours to Italy covering, Piemonte, Tuscany and Veneto; New variations on Champagne and Bordeaux such as Champagne Technical and Bordeaux weekends and Bordeaux cru classé.

On the brochure front, Tim Clarke finally traded in the crayons and drawing board for an Applemac.

At long last we launched our "Wine Walks" which we had been planning for years. The first was Burgundy, Gevrey-Chambertin to Puligny Montrachet. It was a great success and has been repeated many times since.

Also new: Australia for Arblaster & Clarke, Umbria & Germany.

Walking holidays are very time consuming to set up (assuming you do it properly as we do). We added two this year: Loire and Beaujolais.

We also added South Africa and Sherry & Andalucia for the first time. "Guests at Chateau Lascombes" came to the Arblaster & Clarke programme where it has been ever since. We would like to thank our friends at Lascombes for their great hospitality over the years.

We had three great 10th Anniversary Champagne tours (only one had been planned!), and many regular clients joined us, some of whom first travelled back in 1987.

We also added a walk to Alsace, a great tour of Chile & Argentina, and one of our favourites, Sicily.

We added Greece this year. Had we run out of countries? No, we noticed that the wines in Greece were becoming good and couldn't resist putting on a Greek Wine Cruise. It was one of the best tours that we have ever operated. It was then repeated in 2000 and 2003.

New Zealand, Gourmet Italia and the Champagne Walk also appeared for the first time.

A lot happened this year but for us the big story was when incorrect advice from the Foreign Office informed us that it was unsafe to travel to Chile forcing us to cancel our two Chile tours causing us quite a financial loss, and causing over forty clients to lose their holidays. (Tim was actually in Chile at the time and saw that there was no problem at all). Anyway it is water under the bridge now.

New this year: A Sancerre & Chablis Walk, A Bordeaux Walk, Southern Italy, Verona & Trentino, and Jazz & Wine in Switzerland.

We started by seeing in the Millennium in the cellars of Champagne Ruinart. This was the only such party in Champagne for the Millennium, would you believe it! - It was fab!

In February / March we had long haul tours to Chile & Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand and Western Australia.

The A&C programme held 55 tours to 17 countries!

The USA's Pacific North-West and Austria were new.

We introduced Tuscan Wine Academy, "Guests at Château Meyre" (Bourgeois chateaux and rising stars in Bordeaux), Gourmet Southern Italy, Germany (including the Rheinhessen & Pfalz), and a superb Italian Islands Wine Cruise.

Returning after a rest .... Rhone & Provence, Truffles hunting in the Loire, and Special Beers of Belgium.

California, New Zealand, Australia and Chile & Argentina were well supported. The group to the Pacific Northwest was smaller, so perhaps this tour will feature in alternate years in the future.

Winetourers are not easily discouraged from travelling. In the late autumn the level of enquiries and number of bookings was actually up on the previous year.

There was a new "Guests at Château Pichon-Longueville Baron" in the Reserve collection, a new walk in the Rhone, a new Australia II, - with a longer look at Western Australia, plus a drive from Adelaide to Melbourne taking in Coonawarra and Western Victoria.

There was new tour of Sardinia, a radical look at Rioja, and a new vineyard walk - The Rhone.

Returning after a rest we have South Africa, with a superb new itinerary, Verona Opera & Wine, plus Aix-en-Provence Opera & Wine.

Also as it's 15 years on we had "Anniversary Champagne".

There were several exciting new tours "Douro-Duero river of wine" (which included rare tasting of Vega Sicilia), "Bolgheri & the Tuscan coast" (which includes an unheard of visit to Tenuta San Guido to taste Sassicaia) and Guests at Chateau Franc-Mayne in St Emilion (where we will tasted the great wines of the "right bank").

There was a new independent Vineyard walk in Champagne & Burgundy, a new escorted Vineyard walk in Rioja.

Returning again was the Greek Wine Cruise, Madeira, California and Burgundy Vineyard Walk.

There was a new Vineyard Walk in Portugal's Douro Valley.

South Africa made a welcome return - The wines from the Cape are really coming on.

We had an innovative new tour to Slovenia showing just how good the wines are, and treating the excellent Italian Collio and the 'unknown' Slovenian Brda regions as one region, which is what of course they are.

Piemonte was the flavour of the year - we had more tours here than ever before.

In Champagne we had our first "Ultimate Champagne" tour. Designing this tour was fun, we just sat down and thought what are all the really fabulous things we would love to do in Champagne, and lets do them all!

Corsica, Rhone Walk and Cookery in the Veneto were back.

We had a new Cruise, on a new boat. Venice to Dubrovnic on the fabulous super yacht "Pantheon".

After several pretty static years, due to the Internation situation, this year saw some growth.

We introduced some great new tours including Bordeaux Wine & City, Gourmet Istria at the cheaper end and in the Reserve Collection there was the opportunity to stay as Private Guests at Chateau Suduiraut.

We had a new Cruise sailing on the "The Pantheon", from Sicily to Greece.

Our German tour took a good look at the Pfalz and the Australia tour got as far as Southern Tasmania

Having realised that our "Classic Wine Tours" are almost always multi-centre tours, we have re-branded these "Wine Journeys". This year we have some great new "Wine Journeys" including "Corsica & Sardinia", "Puglia", "Ravenna & Le Marche", and "The Great Wines of Northern Spain".

There are also new tours in the Reserve Collection, "Jerez", "The Rhone" and "The Right Bank".

There will be long haul tours to Chile, Argentina & Uruguay, New Zealand, South Africa and in the summer to the Pacific Northwest.

The Mosel Walk setup went very well - this will be one of the best walks yet.

To celebrate the companies 20th anniversary we had the special tour "Anniversary Champagne", where we took 80 clients out to Reims for a long weekend.

We are proud to continue to remain a small, independent family run firm. Our range of holidays has grown and we now offer the widest choice of wine and gourmet holidays both in style and destination. Most importantly, our passion for creating interesting, imaginative tours and giving you a great holiday experience from the moment you first contact us continues unabated.

We relaunched our website in November 2007 and this year we are hoping to develop it even further - this will include the facility for online booking amongst many other new features.