Initially, in the Spring of 1987 we just operated Champagne Weekends. Champagne was exploding on to the British market and Tim Clarke (Champagne expert and wine lover) and Lynette Arblaster (Travel specialist) believed that the idea of the “Champagne Weekend” could become a the basis of a whole new concept in holidays.

Thus A&C was born. However we did not just visit the obvious well known cellars. Right from the start we wanted to show interesting smaller Champagne houses and the grower producers with Champagnes from vineyards in the best villages. The formula, with its mix of visits, Champagne breakfasts, comparative tastings and an approachable wine expert on hand proved to be great fun and a winning one. The basic idea of our Champagne Weekends has changed little since then.

There were several established Wine Tours firms, but they seemed to visit touristy cellars or long established, under-performing ‘names’ and have little grasp of the exciting possibilities in wine at this time. The wine world was on the move and we saw that wine tourism had enormous potential. We had the energy and were passionately determined to shake the boredom out of wine tours and inject new ideas. We also had prior experience in both travel and wine. From the start the firm was soundly financed and we got an ATOL license as soon as possible.

We were very busy researching and setting up the programme. We decided right from the beginning that being a Specialist Wine Tour Operator meant we would operate the tours ourselves. The tours were all our own ideas and we, not an agent or incoming operator would be responsible for the quality and getting the detail right, (such as the vintage of the wines, which wines would go with which food and so on).

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 (both superb and well established), we visited included Dr Loosen, Rolly Gassmann & Marcel Deiss. – No surprises then you might think – but look at the date – these were not well known domains then. We would always rather visit a rising star than an established name who is perhaps a little tired but might help sell the tour.

Everything was going very well. The clients seemed to love our tours and many travelled more than once a year. Tim Clarke was joined by a couple more Wine Guides but we were a small team and were pretty busy.

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.

Amongst other projects, we arranged a tour of California for 50 Champenoise vignerons.

The idea of where we might go and what we might do was changing rapidly.

1991 was the first Gulf War year and the start of a recession which hit the travel industry very hard. Almost all foreign travel stopped very suddenly.

As well as the very high profile failures even the embryonic wine tours sector was hit with at least 2 other small firms ultimately closing. It was a tough year, but A&C with it’s emphasis on high quality and good value, emerged stronger and as the largest player in the Wine Tours scene.

Growth seemed unlikely this year, as the world-wide recession deepened, but our regular clients travelled as always. We kept our costs and prices down.

We introduced our first longer tour by coach: Bordeaux and the Loire, which was very popular for the next 10 years. We featured Gourmet & Cookery tours for the first time.

We also explored several new areas with a view to adding them in the future.

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.

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.

We arranged our first New Year wine tour (in Champagne), plus the first of our “Guests at Chateau” Bordeaux tours. These tours became staples in our programme. Basing a top level Bordeaux tour at a great chateau is another A&C original idea.

Also new that year were Umbria and Germany, both of which which we repeat from time to time.

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 and we busy planning and setting up others too. Actually the walks are great fun to set up and we find that we really learn a lot about the area we are exploring. The walk programme, though not large, is ever evolving. Over the years some of the Vineyard Walks have been among the very best tours that we have done.

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 great 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. In 2009 we arranged a wine and archeology cruise on the Star Clipper and hope to arrange a cruise with a new itinerary for 2011.

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.

Although there was a bit of an economic dip, Winetourers are not easily discouraged from travelling. In the late autumn the level of enquiries and number of bookings was actually slightly 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.

There was another Wine Cruise aboard the Star Clipper, sailing from Rome to Sicily.

Also as it’s 15 years on we had “Anniversary Champagne”.

This year there were several extremely exciting new tours:

“Douro-Duero, River of wine” (Following the river and tasting great wines in Ribera del Duero, Toro, the Douro and Porto AND included rare tasting at 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 tasted the greatest wines of the “Right Bank” with the dream list of chateaux as visits).

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 of all the fabulous things that we had done in Champagne, thought let’s add a few more, and lets do them all!

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

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.

Our German tour took a good look at the Pfalz and Rheingau as well as our usual stamping ground in the Mosel and Saar. The Australia tour got as far as Coonawarra, Heathcote and Southern Tasmania.

We had a new Cruise sailing on the “The Pantheon”, from Sicily to Greece. The route took us to the Aeolian isles, Calabria, Puglia, the Ionian islands, the southern Peloponnese and Paros.

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.

To celebrate 21 years of winetouring we had special tour to Portugal, site of our first ‘serious’ tour. A small group of regular clients experienced a fantastic flight of great and truly original wines – which some found unexpected. – It was like this back in 1988 – some things don’t change!

This year new tours included:

Bordeaux The Great Chateaux (March)
Provence in the Spring (April)
Lyons Wine & City (May)
Champagne Vineyard Walk (June)
Andrea Bocelli in Rome (June)
Gourmet Emilia Romagna (October)
The Loire by Train (October)
Ultimate Tuscany (November)

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

These are interesting and testing times for us all. If you have read though our whole ‘history’ you’ll see that this was far from the first testing year that we have faced.

The travel industry is far from immune to world problems, however an interesting side-effect of the credit crunch has been that travellers have returned to established companies and are rightly concerned about the financial security of their bookings. Arblaster & Clarke are of course FULLY BONDED which means that ALL payments made to us are 100% secure. Consumer protection.

For the first time in many years we contracted our programme, in this way we avoided cancelling people’s holidays and so our smaller programme was well supported. As it turned out we were rather too successful in this, and later in the year we had to put on several more tours!

There was a significant devaluation of the pound. A&C however secured our foreign currency requirements at favourable rates before this happened. We are therefore able to offer No Surcharge guarantee. The No Surcharge Guarantee remains in place in 2010.

The New Year tour was in Turin & Piemonte. There was a large Long Haul program this year featuring in February and March – California, New Zealand, South Africa and Chile & Argentina. plus Pacific Northwest (Washington & Oregon) in July and a second South Africa tour in November.

A couple of spring tours were effected by the Icelandic volcano, but in both cases the tours went ahead and we were able to do something later in the year for the clients who couldn’t make it. Congratulations to those who did!

The 2010 Wine Cruise was on the Sailing Cruiser Panorama (not the S.Y. Ponant as originally planned). The route was from Athens to Malta via Sicily, the islands off Sicily and Tunisia.