This nine-day wine tour to Burgundy and Champagne gives you some of the best France has to offer of wine and gastronomy.
The landscape in Burgundy is exactly as you would expect; rolling green hills with vineyards on the slopes, a string of small villages with world-famous names (Pommard, Vosne-Romanée, Gevrey-Chambertin…). Burgundy’s “capital”, Beaune, is a small town but thanks to the fame of its wine, it is well-visited, so well-visited that it can sometimes be difficult to get a table at one of the city’s many restaurants.
On the tour, we, of course, spend most of our time out among the vineyards. We mainly visit smaller family producers with more personal wines and more personal visits than the big négociant ones. However, one of them is on the program and there we can inspect an old wall from Roman times (!) in the cellar.
The importance of “grand cru” and “premier cru” should not be exaggerated; it is above all the talent of the winemaker that matters. But of course there will be many grand crus too. At one of our gastronomic lunches there will be a whole series – five or six or was it seven…? It is fascinating to see that this rural and peaceful landscape produces some of the world’s most highly regarded and expensive wines.
Going north we make a stop in Chablis and then continue to Champagne.
Those who think they know something about champagne (the wine) and Champagne (the regoin) often talk about “champagne grand cru” and claim that it’s the best you can find in Champagne. But that’s not really true. “Grand cru” in Champagne was created at the beginning of the 20th century as a tool for price control…
What’s important in making a quality champagne is the work of the winemaker, not primarily what plot of land the grapes grew on – how he takes care of his vines, that he places great importance on the harvest and not least what he does in the cellar. Champagne, more than almost all other wines, is a product of the work in the wine cellar. How to ferment. How to blend wines from different grapes, different plots, different vintages, to get the character the winemaker wants.
Champagne is certainly a luxury product and it can, of course, be lovely with a nice gift box and a heavy and worked bottle. But what matters most is how it tastes when you drink it and that has little (nothing) to do with whether the bottle comes in a box or is glittery.
What you will experience on our wine tour in Champagne is the craftsmanship, the incredible range of characters, the importance of the winegrower’s hand.
And, of course, some truly exceptional lunches – there are few others, if any, that can give you these gastronomic wine and food experiences.
Come on this exceptional tour to two of the world’s most respected wine regions with BKWine, one of the world’s leading wine tour operators (*).
Book now!
(*) And the only one who has authored 13 award-winning wine books.
