Personalized Tours in France, Spain and Portugal

Famous French Wines & Spirits

Touraine - Loire Valley - Cognac - Bordeaux

Remember your last very special meal... the great wines and the soothing after-dinner drink? This tour itinerary takes you to the places in France where some of those great wines, brandies and liqueurs come from. If you are a wine lover and you are "Chardonnayed out," this tour will introduce you to new and different types of wines: the wonderfully crisp Loire Valley wines, made from Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and melon grapes. Vouvray, and Muscadet are some of the best known. You will also learn about the legendary wines of Bordeaux.

The region of Touraine, also known as "the garden of France," is the first stop on the tour route. This province was the playground of the Kings of France, especially during the Renaissance. (Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance man, didn't die in Italy as one might expect. He finished his days in a Touraine chateau near Amboise).

The area is full of resplendent castles competing with each other for beauty, elegance and architectural refinement. Some of them are well known - Chambord, Chaumont, Chenonceau, Blois, Villandry and Azay-le-Rideau - but there are dozens more peppered all around the countryside. As a matter of fact, a 200-mile stretch along the river Loire, from Orleans to Angers, is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, further proof (as if needed) of the attractiveness and the important cultural makeup of the region.

Angers is not far from the vineyards but it is also home to Cointreau, the world-famous liquor manufacturer. The sweet after-dinner drink, a kind of triple-sec, is made with a blend of sweet and bitter orange peels and pure alcohol from sugar beets. The estimated production is thirteen million bottles a year. The distillery and the museum are open to the public for tours and tastings.

Cognac. Hennessy, Remy Martin, Courvoisier, Martell are all international brand names associated with France. Their famous brandy is the product of the next region on this tour: Les Charentes. Here again you have a perfect location for more visits, tastings and fine cuisine and a perfect occasion to find out more about the grapes, the double distillation process, ageing and blending. After this tour, you should know all about "eau de vie" (literal translation: water of life!) and VSOP, Napoléon and XO.

Finally, long-awaited Bordeaux - heaven on earth for any wine lover. And, speaking of international brand names! Here are a few more: Médoc, Pomerol, St. Emilion, Graves and Sauternes - all legendary places with worldwide name recognition. They are all huddled around the affluent city of Bordeaux.

A drive though the vineyards of Médoc is a delightful panoramic tour, a never-ending succession of beautiful chateaus pop up at every bend in the road: here you see Chateau Pichon Baron and there Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Over there is Chateau Lynch Bages and so on. Those are just a few of the many famous names in this region.

In another direction you reach St. Emilion. There again, famous French wine appellations abound. But as a World Heritage Site, this is special area. Wine production was introduced there by the Romans and intensified in the Middle Ages. The area benefited from its location on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and many churches, monasteries and hospices were built there from the 11th century onwards. Most notable is the monolithic cathedral - a church carved out of a hillside in the town of St. Emilion. A must-see, needless to say.

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