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Wine Tasting Vacation?
Hi ladies!
For about 10 years now, my BFF and I have been talking about taking a vacation to celebrate a big birthday that's coming up. We both like trying new kinds of wine, and thought it might be fun to do that for our trip.
Ideally, we'd love to go to Europe but are also open to other ideas. We'd like to keep it as inexpensive as possible.
Does anybody have any ideas? Has anyone taken a wine trip that they enjoyed, or didn't enjoy?
Thanks so much for your input!
Re: Wine Tasting Vacation?
If you really need to keep it "as inexpensive as possible" go local. There are wine regions in almost every state. There's the Finger Lakes in NY, Traverse City in MI (or Southwest Michigan closer to Chicago), there's Yakima and Walla Wall in Washington, Willamette in Oregon. There are even smaller wine trails in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Colorado, etc. If you can afford to fly domestically, I'd head east to New York or West to California and do Sonoma or Napa.
I've also been wine tasting in Argentina, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Nova Scotia, and South Africa.
We're definitely open to something like California. I've never been, so I think that would be awesome. This trip is a big deal so we are willing to spend some money on it, but basically we don't want to go completely nuts with the budget.
Honestly, all of this is somewhat flexible. (I know, that does not help at all.) It will likely be spring or summer of 2013. Neither of us likes sweet wine, but otherwise we both really just like trying out new things. It will probably be about a week long, maybe a little longer.
My favorite wine tasting trip so far has been Margaret River, Australia. So many small-scale wineries making excellent and inexpensive wine, and the winemakers were all so friendly and eager to chat! It was a lot of fun!
(various reds & whites with a strong focus on Cabs, Shiraz, and red blends)
Luxembourg definitely had the best deals when it came to great wines at inexpensive prices. Without speaking French, we didn't get as much background at some of the wineries, but there were certainly still some gems!
(excellent whites, especially dry Rieslings)
I just got back from a trip to Vill?ny, Hungary, and it was inexpensive overall. A few of the higher-end wineries have very affordable guestrooms and spas, and we spent two days sampling the country's favorite reds. I felt that some of the bottles were overpriced, but they don't do traditional tastings, so you just buy a few glasses at each winery and are less compelled to buy bottles (in fact, they didn't really seem to expect it even when we did). Attila Gere had a great restaurant (though DBF preferred Bock's), and the prices were quite low.
(reds; I preferred the blends over the single-varietals)
A few years ago we went to Sonoma and got a great hotel deal through Hotwire, but everything else was a bit more expensive. I think its popularity has taken a toll, and a lot of places were pretentious or touristy, so it was hard to find the lower key operations we like.
(known for the Pinots and Chardonnays but lots of other varietals)
Texas Hill Country is fun and not terribly pricey, and the wines aren't bad.
(various reds & whites)
Turkey is also quite inexpensive, but I found it difficult to arrange typical wine touring.
One other inexpensive place I would love to do some wine touring is Nashik, India. Sula and a few other makers make some surprisingly good wine!
lol that makes sense though-it's over a year away
some things that come to mind immedately are 1) niagara on the lake, canada. Right near niagara falls and toronto. nice wineries and lots to do in the area and torontos a blast. 2) finger lakes area of upstate NY and/or east end of long island. lots of wineris and long island has tons and tons of great towns, beaches etc... for that far out east you can fly into islip airport. you can also take the ferry across the sound to CT-mystic and casinos.
I've been to Napa/Sonoma five times (our latest trip was two weeks ago) and have a lot of information on the area in my blog. However, for an entire week it might get a little boring since there's not a ton to do (some outdoorsy stuff). You could combine it with time in San Francisco, Big Sur or Monterey, though.
Also, a lot of the Washington state wineries have tasting rooms in a suburb of Seattle called Woodinville. It's a cute little town with some nice places to stay and good restaurants, and it would be easy to combine it with Seattle, Vancouver or Portland (and a little less far flung that the areas where the wine is actually grown).
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
My Travel Blog
As others have mentioned, since you indicated you wanted to keep it as inexpensive as possible, I too would recommend traveling within the US. I visited Napa Valley/Sonoma County several years ago for 4 days and had a blast (blog entry here). A week of wine tasting would be too much for me, but you could easily combine that trip with several days in San Francisco.
Additionally, another option would be to visit Seattle/Portland or Seattle/Vancouver and then head to Washington's wine country (Walla Walla/Yakima) for a few days. We will actually be visiting Walla Walla for 4 nights at the end of May and a blog entry will be posted sometime in June.
I second this recommendation. I've visited Woodinville twice, once combined with a trip to Seattle and another time combined with a trip to Vancouver and Whistler (both of these Canadian stops are GORGEOUS!).
Well we went to Mendoza, Argentina in January and that was fabulous. Lots of good wine and food.
What is your budget and how long do you want to be gone? With the European exchange rates the way they are it might impact your trip.