Private Group Wine Tours
Burgundy Tasting with Steven Spurrier
Champagne Dinner
International Groups (ie. Non UK based)
See Also Private Groups & Wine Clubs UK
Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours was founded in 1986 by the current Directors. Every year since then Wine Tours for private parties have been arranged. Many of the groups have been international, from the USA, Australia, South Africa, France, the Netherlands plus Hong Kong and China.
In fact many of these parties return again and again. So, for example, we have a party from an American wine club who have travelled with us to Bordeaux, Tuscany, Piedmont, Australia, Chile and Argentina. A small exclusive group of wine connoisseurs from Hong Kong have so far travelled with us to Burgundy, Rhone and Bordeaux. We have also taken several large groups of Champagne Vignerons to the New World and even organised a wedding in Portugal for an Irish wine merchant.
- We have multi-lingual Tour Managers, trained to extremely high A&C standards, who can escort your party.
- We can arrange Private Wine Tours to the very highest level to any of 21 wine countries, countless superb wine & gourmet destinations and for any style of holiday including an exclusive luxury Wine Cruise.
- We can also arrange Vineyard Walks in the major wine regions of France, Spain, Portugal, Piemonte or even England!
- We can arrange Wine & Opera tours to Venice, Lucca, Milan or Vienna.
- We can arrange gourmet tours to Italy and Italy for truffle hunting or cookery demonstrations.
If you are organising a group wine tour and would like a previous organiser to give you a reference for us, we are happy to put you in touch.
Go straight to Tour Itinerary ideas – or scroll down to read more details about our private group tours.
Research, Innovation and our Knowledge of the Wine regions of the world
Group leaders often come to us after they have started to do quite a lot of work trying to arrange the tour, sometimes having specially visited the region they still find that it is too difficult. However, we have already done the research! We have a huge thirst for more knowledge about our regions. We are constantly searching out the best hotels, most interesting restaurants and of course the latest news on the wine front too!
We know and have personally inspected the best value and the most luxurious hotels to use and can offer many suggestions according to your budget and group size. Unlike some authors of guide books and general tour operators who have never been to the wine regions, we use the hotels for our clients and know how people react to them in practice. Therefore we are equipped to know which rooms to ask for or indeed avoid.
In the past year, our team has re-researched most of the wine regions of France, several regions of Italy and Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, South America and Greece – checking up on many of the hotels that we use and finding new ones. We were appalled at the ranking given to some hotels by guide books. Relying on ratings on the web is no guarantee either, as you have no idea who posted these comments and they have no liability to you if you don’t agree with their opinions.
Your Wine Tours Itinerary & Access to Wine Estates and Wine Chateaux
We love designing wine touring itineraries and are keen to ensure that these are designed to suit you, using the best of our extensive knowledge and ability. This passion for designing great wine tours has continued over our quarter of a century of wine touring plus the many more years in the hospitality industry prior to this. In addition to our Directors personal experience, two of the senior managers have more than 13 years with A&C and the rest of the team are catching up fast. There is simply no more experienced, knowledgeable or passionate wine tours team anywhere in the world.
Tell us what your level of wine interest is and if you have other interests that you would like us to work in. For example, golf, a visit to an olive oil producer, a cookery demonstration, visits to markets, the opera, (we are also highly experienced in opera tours), theatres, museums, historic sites or important towns, or just some time for relaxing. We want to ensure that your holiday itinerary is as intensive or as relaxed as you want it to be. You may want an extensive tour with an itinerary packed with in depth visits, or you may also want optional non-wine activities such as golf, shopping or visiting attractions for part of the group.
Our long-standing and highly esteemed reputation means that we can arrange visits to many of the top wine producers throughout the wine-world including top Bordeaux chateaux and Burgundy domaines. We know which visits are good, genuinely interesting and generous with tastings, and, which are not (even though they may sound interesting).
If there’s a particular vineyard, winery, Burgundy domaine, Bordeaux château or Champagne house that you wish to visit we will do our best to accommodate your request. We can sometimes arrange visits to wine producers who are normally closed. We can often arrange for the Wine-maker, Owner or a senior Manager to host your visit if your group are particularly interested in wine.
Lunches and dinners arranged at wine cellars & Restaurant menu choices
At A&C good food is as important as great wines. Our favorite place to enjoy the wines is with a meal, preferably at the winery! There are few more pleasurable ways, to our minds, of spending a day than at a leisurely lunch at a beautiful wine domaine hosted by the wine-maker; looking out over the vineyards, with delicious platefuls of tasty local specialties to complement the wine. We know the cellars that can entertain you and where you’ll find the best hospitality. We can recommend restaurants to suit your requirements, using our extensive knowledge of the wine regions – which are good value, which are to be avoided and which have great wine lists, from simple river-side auberges, to the greatest Triple Michelin Star rated restaurants.
The Guides
Arblaster & Clarke have superb Wine Guides including some of the most famous names in wine. See Guides.
Choose the level of guidance you require according to your budget and wine interest. Either a Wine Guide and Tour Manager; a Wine Guide who can act as a Tour Manager or just a Tour Manager. We can arrange for a local Wine Guide to join you for part of the tour and local city guides too. Plus translators into languages not covered on our wine tours on request.
Go straight to Tour Itinerary ideas – or scroll down to read more details about pricing and how to request an itinerary.
Plan in advance & Pricing
We strongly recommend that you plan ahead as much as possible. Getting your party together will take longer than you think and your first choice of accommodation is more likely to be available given a good lead in time. This is especially the case if you go for the high-season wine touring months of September through to early November. That being said, we have often and can put tours together at very short notice if that is what you need. This nearly always limits your choice and can also increase the price.
To give a price indication on a particular wine tour, please refer to the tour itineraries below. For larger parties than our maximum numbers prices will be less, for parties smaller than on our tours the per person prices will be higher. The amount of meals included for your party, the standard of the hotels, and the time of year you choose will also affect the price.
Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours – Fully Bonded & Licensesd
Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours is a fully licensed and bonded Tour Operator and is the ONLY full time wine tours operator offering 100% financial protection, no matter how you choose to travel. We carry extensive Public Liability and other necessary insurances. We have an Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL) granted by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). We are members of the Association of Independent Tour operators. (AITO) and ABTA. All the money that you pay to us is protected by our bonds with the CAA, ATOL 2543 and ABTA Y5806. The financial protection afforded by these bonds does extend to our private group clients from overseas. (This is often not the case with other British or European companies even when they are bonded). See why this is important.
You should be aware that companies or individuals that offer trust accounts do not offer this level of financial security whatever promises the tour organiser makes. These accounts are unregulated (unless they are overseen by the TTA), cost the operator nothing to set up and since no external entity has checked the accounts, are often found to be empty when needed. Professional tour operators who are genuinely interested in protecting their client’s money and interests do not use trust accounts, which were originally intended for social groups or church outings only.
To ask Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours to arrange your private wine tour:
Call us to discuss your wine tour requirements or email us a time to call you or email us telling us the following information:
- The likely maximum and minimum size of the party & time of year or preferred date and length of trip.
- The preferred style and star rating of the accommodation & the number and standard of the meals to be included.
- Whether you would like just a Tour Manager or a Tour Manager and a Wine Guide .
- Your rough budget expectation (required an early stage so that we can design a wine tour to meet your aspirations or let you know what we can arrange for your budget).
- Is there a particular quality of wine that you would like to taste. For example, the very greatest Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines, 95 points – 100 point wines, however expensive they are, with cost no object?
- The kind of visits – great and famous wines and vineyards, the best known producers, impressive chateau and domaines?
- Are you interested in particular or unusual producers, rising stars or perhaps people we suggest as most interesting to visit?
We can then design a quote with information on your itinerary, the deposit, booking conditions etc. Normally quotes will be sent within 5 working days, or to meet your deadline, especially if you have a meeting with your party coming up.
Discuss your idea with us: Please call 01730 263111 or e-mail contact@winetours.co.uk.
Tours
Gourmet Emilia-Romagna
27 - 31 October 2012
Lyons Wine & City - Independent Wine Touring Weekend
Contact us for dates.
Bordeaux Margaux Wine Chateau Holiday
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Champagne by Private Plane
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Champagne day trip for Corporate Hospitality
Contact us for dates.
Champagne holiday for Corporate Hospitality
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Porto Wine & City - Independent Wine Touring Weekend
Contact us for dates.
