Vineyard Walking Holidays
The Burgundy Vineyard Walk
Picnic on Rhone and Northern Beaujolais Walk
the ultimate in vineyard walking wine holidays
Arblaster and Clarke, the leading wine tour specialists, offer the ultimate in walking wine holidays with our 'Vineyard Walks' to Burgundy, Alsace, the Douro and Piemonte. Our trails are planned to take in the great vineyards, to give the best views of the châteaux and to take you to wine tastings at great cellars. For private groups of 10 - 16 participants we can also arrange wine walks in Rioja, the Mosel, Champagne, the Rhone and Bordeaux - all of which are areas to which we have personally arranged scheduled wine walks to in the past.
Our Vineyard Walks are genuinely wine tours on foot! The trails have been walked out extensively by our team (It takes us about one man/month to set up a vineyard walk, we are not just following arduous French hiking trails, or putative paths shown on maps - all too often these go somewhere neither beautiful nor useful and sometimes nowhere at all!) The vineyard walks are designed to be educational and on one of our vineyard walks you will begin to see all those differences in soil and aspect which the French call “terroir”.
On a typical day on a Vineyard Walk you will stroll for an hour through the vineyards to our first tasting, then onto a picnic lunch, then more walking and tastings! You will cover an easy five to eight miles a day although this varies with each tour so please read the descriptions carefully. If at any stage you want to "opt out" the coach can be called easily.
On many of our walking a small local mini-bus is on hand throughout the tour. It will transfer your bags and wine after tastings and to take you into the local towns or we have taxis on standby. We use characterful accommodation, comfortable family-run 2* and 3* hotels, and in the Douro stay on a famous wine estate. (All hotel rooms are of course are en-suite, and many have a swimming pool). Arblaster and Clarke have experienced leaders who are enthusiastic walkers with a good knowledge of wine, the trails, the vineyards, food and the region.
The ground covered on our Vineyard Walks varies according to the tour, Burgundy is the lightest of the walks, Loire, Champagne and Bordeaux are also easy walking, but the trails in Rioja, Alsace and certainly in Douro are more strenuous, but would still not really be considered hiking. The party size for all these tours is limited to just 16 people (or just 12 on our Douro walk).
NEW vineyard walks for 2010, include Piemonte, staying on a small family run wine estate (space is already very limited on this, as of March 2010) and Southern Burgundy starting from the stylish hotel owned by the most famous wine producer in Puligny Montrachet and heading south!
View Other Ideas and Past ToursTours
Burgundy Vineyard Walk
30 May - 5 June 2010, 17 - 23 October 2010
Southern Burgundy Harvest Vineyard Walk
4 - 10 September 2010
Douro Vineyard Walk
5 - 11 September 2010
Piemonte Vineyard Walk
13 - 19 September 2010
Alsace Vineyard Walk
3 - 9 October 2010
