Wine Tour to Bordeaux

Bordeaux Confidential Châteaux Wine Tour

For a wine lover a trip to Bordeaux is a must!

November 11-15, 2009

In Bordeaux you find world famous châteaux and world famous wines but also a lot of new exciting initiatives (less famous but maybe more important for the future of Bordeaux!) and young enthusiastic wine makers. On this trip we will visit both some big, famous Grand Cru Classé-châteaux and smaller ones that are less known, but very quality conscious.

We will visit the well-known regions like Médoc and Saint-Emilion, but also rising-stars among the regions, like Entre-deux-Mers and Premières Côtes de Bordeaux. We will learn about viticulture and vinification and after this trip you will know quite a lot about what’s going on in Bordeaux at the moment.

In all the chateaux we will get private tastings together with the people who are involved in the wine making and who are delighted to share with us their passion for fine wine.

We will stay four nights in the city of Bordeaux, an elegant and very beautiful city of just over half a million people. In the evenings you will have the possibility to explore Bordeaux, the sights and the many restaurants, at your leisure.

We will meet in Bordeaux, which is easy to reach; only 3 hours away from Paris by TGV-train. You will arrive Wednesday evening the 14th of October at the latest. On Thursday morning our bus will pick us up for our first visits in the vineyards. Sunday is departure day.

BKWine TV videos on Bordeaux

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Programme

Preliminary programme.

Contact BKWine for the latest news.

Wednesday November 11 - Arrival

Arrival in Bordeaux. Check in at our 3-star hotel, located in the city center.

Evening is free to explore Bordeaux.

Thursday November 12

Our bus will pick us up at our hotel after breakfast.

We will spend the day in Médoc, home to many of the big chateaux names and famous for its wines made primarily of Cabernet Sauvignon. Our bus will take us through the villages of Margaux, Saint-Julien and Pauillac and up to Saint-Estèphe and we will see many beautiful and famous châteaux on the way.

We will visit a few of these chateaux, some of them Grand Cru Classé, for instance Château Brane-Cantenac, Château Phelan-Ségur, Château Paloumey, Château Kirwan. We will have lunch at one of the prestigious chateaux.

Friday November 13

On the other side of the rivers Garonne and Dordogne are Saint-Emilion and Pomerol. The châteaux are smaller than those in the Médoc but the landscape is prettier with more rolling hills and green forests. It is in this region the most expensive wines in Bordeaux can be found.

We will visit some very interesting producers - for instance Château Canon, Château Grâce Dieu les Menuts, Château Grand Corbin Despagne and Château Gaillard and we will meet some very dynamic wine makers.

We will have lunch in the picturesque town of Saint Emilion where you will also have time for a quick stroll before our afternoon visit. Saint Emilion is a wonderful medieval small town on the World Heritage list of UNESCO.

Early evening we are back in Bordeaux. Free evening.

Saturday November 14

“Between the rivers”, in Entre-deux-Mers, the quality of wines is getting better and better. This is perhaps the Bordeaux district where quality has increased with the greatest leaps and bounds over the last two decades. Also, here you can afford to buy them! Look for superb wines under “simple” appellations like Bordeaux Supérieur, but of course, you have to know where to look. This is one of the places in Bordeaux where it pays to know exactly where to go, and when you do, value for money is assured. We will visit one of the “new wave” châteaux here.

For lunch we will go to the region that produces the most famous sweet wines in the world, Sauternes. Here we will have a magnificent lunch in one of the big chateaux, classified as 1er Grand Cru Classé in 1855, enjoy the setting and splendour as well as the gastronomic lunch. We will have a 4-cours meal accompanied with Sauternes wines, and if you didn’t think it is possible to drink sweet wines throughout a meal, well, you were wrong!

We will end our wine tour in Graves where you find superb red and white wines. Here we will visit a small family estate, well known for its superb red and white wines. Graves is the oldest wine region in Bordeaux and some of the chateaux here were talked about already in the 17th century. The soil is very well adapted to Cabernet Sauvignon but also to the white varieties Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon. They mix very well together, Sauvignon gives the wine a nice aromatic touch and Sémillon adds fatness and fullness.

Early evening we are back in Bordeaux. Free evening.

Sunday November 15 - Departure

Tour ends after breakfast.

Program may be subject to minor modifications.

About the wine estates we visit

We want you to experience the best and the most interesting estates. Therefore, we put a lot of effort into finding really good producers to visit. Contrary to what one might think, the most exciting wine producers are not always the "famous names". Often the passionately engaging visits happen when you meet the winemaker or the owner himself (or quite often herself) and his family.

Frequently detailed discussions get underway where a true understanding of how things really “work” develops, we may even stay and have lunch at the winery (unlike in the US many of these do not have purpose-built restaurants). This is also why our trips do not have large numbers of visits on the programme. Even so, we regularly run short of time due to conversations lasting a lot longer than intended and where more and more wines are brought out to taste, somehow time flies.

Our trips are usually a mixture of small family producers and larger, well known wine estates - carefully selected to give you the unique wine experience.

What will you remember the most: the charming winery staff guide with perfect English, or the passionate winemaker who won't let you go until you've tasted yet another of his wines?

To give you a flavour of travelling with BKWine

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See more wine videos on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/bkwine.

Facts

Dates: November 11-15, 2009

Price: 850 Euro

Single room supplement: 105 euro

Included in the price:

Not included:

You go to Bordeaux on your own (we are happy to give you advice on how to get there) and you arrive in the evening of November 11, at the latest.

Tour organiser: Britt Karlsson of BKWine

Britt is of Swedish origin and based in Paris. Since 15 years she works with wine, wine education, wine journalism and organises wine tours. She has over the years arranged a large number of wine tours (a couple of hundreds actually) and has an extensive network of contacts in the wine regions and a deep knowledge of recent developments to make sure that our visits are exceptional. She visits some 200 wineries every year and is frequently called on to participate as a wine judge in international wine competitions.

Our wine guides: Many of our tours are led by Britt herself, with fifteen years experience of wine travel, wine tasting and wine writing, and living in France since 1990. Some tours are led by our highly skilled collaborators. Our wine guides are enthusiastic wine people with a thorough knowledge of both wine and local culture and gastronomy. Plus, of course, language since some of the visits often are in the local language (those visits are often the most interesting ones actually!) and we will then translate to English.

Our wine cellar tours are usually planned around a long weekend (Wednesday evening to Sunday morning) so that you can plan your holiday to also include other activities, such as visiting cultural sites, play golf – or why not drop in to a few more wineries while in the region (we’ll be glad to give you a few names to our preferred vineyards!).

From a gastronomic standpoint, our tours always include some gourmet highlights with local culinary specialities – we often plan at least one gourmet lunch at a winery or vineyard together with the winemaker.

Plan your wine country vacation with BKWine and we can guarantee you an unforgettable wine experience.

Book this trip

Please register for this trip not later than August 1, 2009.

You book by contacting Britt Karlsson, BKWine:

Call me on Skype: bkwine, or by clicking the button to the left (What's this?).

Registration is confirmed by paying the registration fee of €150. Full payment should be received at the latest one month before the departure date. Payments should be made by bank transfer to BKWine’s bank in Sweden. Details will be sent to you when you register.

Important

We always travel in small groups. The maximum group is usually around 20. This is to ensure that our visits are of high quality and that we receive a personal welcome.

For this trip to take place we must have 10 participant registered at the date of book-no-later-than.

You organise your travel independently to the destination but on location we take care of everything.

BKWine is a Swedish registered travel organiser. BKWine has a bonded travel guarantee deposit so that you can feel safe booking with us. We comply fully with European and Swedish travel guarantee regulations. British travellers may be familiar with the ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) protection scheme which is a similar model. BKWine follows the code of conduct and financial safeguards defined by the Swedish Consumer Agency and The Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency ("Kammarkollegiet", with a history dating back to 1539). Read more about this in our Booking Terms and Conditions.

Read the BKWine Booking Terms and Conditions here.

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Custom Tours

PS: We also do custom tours if you want to choose different dates or want something different.

BKWine AB
51, rue du Chevalier de la Barre
92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
France
Phone: +33 (0)6 80 45 35 70
email: info@bkwine.com
www.bkwine.com 

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