Lyons

Dentelles des Montmirail

Lyon Wine & City

24 - 27 October 2013

Our innovative programme of Wine & City trips is aimed at the more independent traveller who would also like to spend a couple of days in a party being taken to wine visits in the company of a wine expert (invaluable of course on a wine tour!). You book your own travel arrangements and meet up at the hotel on the first evening. This gives you the freedom to decide how you wish to travel and the length of your trip.

Lyon, our base for the weekend is the gastronomic capital of France, and has the highest concentration of Michelin starred restaurants outside Paris. Armed with our recommended restaurant list you will be able to select your favourite style of restaurant from haut-cuisine to traditional “bouchon” during the non-escorted evenings. Lyon is also one of the most underrated cities in France, with its attractive setting on two river fronts, its magnificent Roman museum set high up on Fourvière Hill and its fascinating medieval quarter, reputed to be the largest in Europe.

Our Wine Guide meets you on the first evening, and accompanies you to a fantastic local Bouchon for an introductory tasting of the wines of the region, followed by dinner.

During the tour, we visit two very different but very interesting wine regions both within a short distance of the city. To the south of Lyon, we spend a day in Tain l’Hermitage in the Northern Rhone, where we hope to visit the great name of the village, Chapoutier. Here we will taste from their range from the northern Rhône including Crozes-Hermitage, St Joseph and Hermitage. Over lunch you’ll taste wines from other great producers in the region, in one of the lovely little wine bars in Tain.

After lunch, you will continue to another top producer based in the town, Ferraton. During the day, there will also be an opportunity to visit the Valrhona chocolate shop if you would like to and you can feast on the delicious aroma and beautiful chocolate piled shelves! To reach Tain l’Hermitage, we’ll enjoy the scenic rail journey along the Rhône and then be walking around the village between visits. Tain l’Hermitage is a small town, all on the flat, attractively situated on the riverbank and distances on foot are not great – so this is a pleasant way to discover the town and to move between visits.

The next day, we travel to the north of Lyon, visiting the unspoilt villages of the Beaujolais Crus and after our first visit in Morgon or Brouilly we’ll continue to a very beautiful wine Château in Fleurie where you’ll enjoy a picnic style lunch accompanied by the wines of the property, an event that you cannot organise if you are travelling independently. This will be a day discovering the very best of Beaujolais and a chance to rediscover these delightful, wonderfully affordable wines.