Looking for true wine lover experience in Burgundy and Loire

My husband and I enjoy wine and have been wine tasting to many places in the U.S. and France, though my sense is that your tastes may be more discerning than ours. Part of the experience for me is to see the vineyards, people picking and stopping in very small places. We did all our tasting on our own which is a little tricky given France's blood alcohol limits and our propensity for picnic lunches with wine. So we tend to combine a couple wine tasting stops with other activites. In the Loire, we really enjoyed Vouvray. We stopped at this darling winery attached to the winemakers home--Jean Claude Aubert, Vins de Vouvray. We spoke to people that were actually involved in the wine making. We also stopped at the big place in Vouvray that is some kind of larger organization of grape growers/wine makers. I was disappointed initially when we arrived that it was so big and commercial, however, we had a very nice tasting and we learned a lot, especially about sparkling wines. We've never really loved sparkling wine and we typically like drier wines so we assumed that for sparkling we would like dry as well. Turns out for we both like slightly sweet sparkling and some sparking is actually produced to be half as bubbly. That made a huge difference for us. A red wine place we liked was near Amboise, Domaine des Pierrettes, another small place and we did the tasting with the wine maker. This was two years ago and the winery was rather new. It was fun to talk to him about all the French wine rules. In Chinon, we stopped at a newer place, that seemed like a bigger operation so we were not expecting much. Pierre & Bertrand Couly. Well, I don't know if its typical for them, but we tasted with the owners/winemakers who were just a delightful couple. We actually purchased and mailed a case home from there.

P.S. In regards to Burgundy, we ended up tasting at two large operations in Beaune. It was fine, if we had more time we would have liked to have looked for places outside of town. However, I did want to mention that the drive from Beaune to Dijon was stunning. It is a wine route, I think called the route des grand crus.

We had so much fun renting bikes in Beaune and riding through the vineyards to the wine villages of Pommard, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet. Drank amazing Chardonnay at Caveau de Puligny-Montrachet! Stopped for lunch along the way. The bike route is in Rick's book and the bike rental is 19 Euros a day per bike.

Check out what Brendan Moore can set up for you. I did a wine tour with him years ago and absolutely loved it. Several friends then booked him too, and everyone I heard who went with him was always very pleased. Brendan moved to Burgundy decades ago to work for one of the winemakers, and eventually went out on his own giving tours. He's the one who helped me to finally understand terroir and the differences between the crus, etc etc (as we stood on a hillside in Chablis looking down at the seven grand cru vineyards). Highly recommend.

http://wine-liaisons.com/

hi jtdante
another site to check is alafrancaise.fr they have a few tours and other areas. Some friends liked the Biarritz tour. Haven’t used but in my save folder for trip later.
aloha

Maybe Robert from Portland, Maine, will see your posting and provide a comment. He seems a bit more focused on wines of the area than I am.

Thank you Bob. In Burgundy, my wine tastings and visits have mostly been focused on Southern Burgundy (especially the Cote Chalonnaise and the Maconnais), and the Chablis area. That leaves out the whole middle -- the Cote d'Or -- which is where the most prestigious/priciest producers are, as well as the well-know negociants. While we've almost always visited wineries in Burgundy w/o an appointment (and never a tour), a tour might be the way to go if you want to visit wineries in the Cote d'Or. As to the Loire, it's so sprawling that it's difficult to generalize. But in the Loire Valley there are few large producers, and you can generally just stop in w/o an appointment, as long as someone is there, of course, Some places are very small, and you just have to take a chance that someone will be there and have the time to talk and let you taste wine.
Rather than giving you specific places to visit, I'm attaching the link to my travel blog, There are posts about wine visits scattered throughout. http://mainelywinenews.blogspot.com/

These are all great suggestions! I am heading to Bob's blog right now to check it out . . .

Thank you everyone, and if you think of anything else, please let me know! I leave next week.

Does anyone have experience with the tour group Burgundy Discovery? Thinking of doing the grand premier one day tour.