3 Tips When Doing A Wine Tasting or Winery Tour on Vacation

One increasingly popular activity to center a vacation around is wine tasting and touring wineries. This can be a great way to mix your love of wine with your love of travel. Because wine tours can be expensive depending on where and when you’re going, if this is your first time, you’re going to want to be sure you’re prepared for what this experience will entail. So to help those planning their first wine tasting or wine tour while on vacation, here are three things that may help you make the most of this time during your travels.

Make Plans If You’re Taking The Kids

While tasting wine is reserved for those over the legal drinking age, you don’t necessarily have to keep the kids out of the entire experience that can be had on a wine tour. Seeing the grounds and learning about the process of making wine can be a great experience for your children to have. However, during the tasting of the wine, you may want to make some special plans so your children also have an enjoyable time. Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, contributors to The Wall Street Journal, recommend bringing in something to distract and entertain the kids while you’re wine tasting. You could even ask the staff if there’s somewhere the kids could play on their own or animals on the premises that the kids could interact with.

Pick The Right Time Of Year

Because there is wine made all over the world, there are wineries all over the world that you can visit, tour, and taste wine at. So when planning your trip, you’re going to want to make sure you pick the right time of year for making your visit that a particular winery. Greig, a contributor to Winederlusting.com, reminds us that summer and winter seasons are opposite for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Also, if you want to be at a winery during harvest, you’ll want to be sure you get there during the correct month. The spring months will allow you to see the vines budding but everything might not be in full bloom yet. Keep this idea in mind when planning where to travel to and when.

Don’t Over-Schedule Yourself

Many areas have groups of wineries gathered together due to prime conditions for growing there. This means that you could theoretically visit many wineries in a very short period of time. However, if you want to enjoy and relax on your vacation and wine tour, be careful not to over-schedule yourself. Zach Geballe, a contributor to Salon.com, suggests not scheduling visits to more than three or four wineries in any given day. This will give you the time to enjoy each place you visit and not feel too rushed to get out of there and on to the next tour and tasting.

If you’d like to take your first wine tour or wine tasting on your next vacation, use the tips mentioned above to help you do so successfully. Make sure to try as many wines as you can. That way, you’ll be able to find your favorite sort of wine when you get home. Many people often join wine clubs after visiting wineries. Wine clubs, like Wine Access, automatically deliver subscriptions of wine to people’s doors, allowing them to taste even more wines. So, if you like red wine or white wine, it might be worth bringing some back from the winery or joining a club for regular wine deliveries.