Are you a cork dork, a gastro tourist or merely an enthusiastic quaffer? Whether you prefer red, white or rosé, Victor Smart has a wine trip to suit
On a recent trip to Burgundy I discovered that foreign tourists, Japanese in particular, will pay a couple of hundred euros to spend a hard day harvesting grapes in prestigious vineyards. On occasion they time the visit for their own convenience – even if that means months before the grapes are ready for picking. Their French hosts are understandably dismayed.
“Are we meant to stick ripened grapes to the vines?” asks one producer ruefully.
Wine tourism has long been a thing. If you are not already a wine geek, it’s a great initiation into the baffling talk of terroir, appellations, domains and grape varietals. The history, the winemakers that you meet and the places that you visit (often gorgeous countryside) bring the whole wine business alive. Soon you’ll be babbling happily about second fermentations, minerality and tannins.
But visitors are becoming progressively savvy – everyone, it seems, is looking for more. A sedate bike trip down La Route des Grands Crus in Burgundy, with a local cheese and a half bottle of Château de Santenay in your backpack, no longer quite cuts la moutarde. The new generation of wine tasters demands a more immersive experience.
A couple pick grapes at the Moët & Chandon vineyard in Ningxia
France, the world’s traditional wine champion, is responding, while specialist wine tourism companies are also catching on. There are wine cruises, mushroom-picking tours and visits to the cellars carved out of rocks beneath Saint-Émilion. Multi-media centres like Bordeaux’s exciting new Cité du Vin are well worth a trip. Plus there are rides around vineyards in hot air balloons, crop-spraying helicopters, quaint old Citroën 2CVs – you name it.
There is no lack of specialist operators. But beware: while prices start off modestly enough, at the top end you can splash the cost of a new Mercedes convertible on a seven-day guided tour. Best be sure that you are actually passionate about your wines.
If so, with wines from further afield now lining our local retailers’ shelves, you may want to be a little more adventurous. Chile, Argentina, South Africa and California are all good bets, although a water shortage and forest fires have affected the latter two. South Africa is especially easy to recommend – the wines may not be the finest by the standards of the most discerning ’cork dork’, but you are sure of a warm personal welcome, yummy barbecues and a rare willingness to listen to your views on the wines, which include some luscious sparklings.
Far more novel, however, is Georgia on the Black Sea, where wine production is widely believed to have begun, over 7,000 years ago. In fact, our word ‘wine’ is derived from the Georgian ‘gvino’.
But if even this seems a bit tame, head for China, or more specifically the autonomous region of Ningxia. Bordering the arid Gobi Desert, yet watered by the broad Yellow River, the region is home to a big vineyard owned by Champagne maker Moët & Chandon, and you will now find one or two Ningxia wine imports at your local supermarket.
Two decades ago, there was scarcely a vine under cultivation in Ningxia, a poor, underdeveloped region where the ferocious winter wind compels the burial of vines for their protection. Now there are vast tracts of successful vineyard, with wine tourism at the heart of the Chinese state’s grand plan to create employment in Ningxia by turning the Chinese middle classes into vigorous partakers of the grape. There is to be a wine route to rival that of Burgundy and several wineries have built vast, forbidding tasting halls worthy of a Game of Thrones set.
Model of the proposed The Ho-Lan Soul Winery
The grandest plan of all is at the Ho-Lan Soul winery. When I visited, I saw the beginnings of a massive wine theme park: one huge central château to be surrounded by 200 smaller private châteaux. Here you will be able to buy your own plot, bottle your own wine and place your own name on the label – always assuming a certain degree of affluence. No offence, but I suspect you don’t qualify, as the scheme is really aimed at the country’s burgeoning class of billionaire.
So there’s plenty to see. Before you set off, however, think hard about your budget and give yourself an identity check. Are you a true wine obsessive, an informed gastro-tourist or just a casual visitor? And if your travel tastes are truly short-haul, do remember that there is always the famed Château Tooting: a wine blended annually from grapes grown in scores of back gardens near you.
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