We will be visiting in 2022 and doing research now. Can anyone recommend spots where we can taste wine along with small plates of food ( or something like that); we did this in Napa and in Italy we did a farm lunch where we had home made cheese and were served a lunch with different wines. Has anyone done anything like this in the Loire or Bordeaux. Hope I’ve adequately explained it . Thanks.
Posted by
Tunbridge Wells
6113 posts
I have just done wine tasting, not including lunch. I had an excellent tour plus tasting at Langlois-Chateau in Saumur in the Loire, which is where we stayed. It was a good base, rather than staying in one of the larger towns such as Angers.
In the Bordeaux region, we tasted at the caves at Caves de Rauzan, but again didn’t eat there. The staff here spoke good English and were very helpful. It’s a cooperative, having wines from all the growers in the village.
Posted by
Panguitch, Utah
2703 posts
Most of the viticulturist of the Loire Valley are relatively small farmers who are not really set up for visitors, at least not visitors in any number. Some will offer tastings (dégustation) of their wines to those driving by but the Loire Valley is nothing like Napa Valley.
Another big concern is driving in France after having drunk any alcohol. The blood/alcohol threshold is very low at 0.5g/l and police road stops designed to administer breathalyzer tests can be anywhere, at any time of day or night. When driving, I drink absolutely nothing, be it with food or not.
If you want to do wine tasting at various locations, I strongly recommend your hiring a guide. Specialists will have access to properties you would not otherwise have, can offer insight into the wine making process, and you will not need to worry about the police.
Here are a couple I recommend:
Tour the Loire - ask for Simon
DMJ Wineworks (Bordeaux)
You might also check with the various Offices de Tourisme which typically offer wonderful recommendations and sometimes offer wine tours themselves:
For Bordeaux, you may have better luck with your search for wine tasting with hors d'oeuvre, but I would still check with a professional guide:
Posted by
California
497 posts
The best wine tasting we did in Bordeaux (and we did twice, two separate years) was with Xavier with 33 Tour. It’s just with you or your small group, not a bus or anything big, but in his van. He got us into wineries that are impossible to get into normally, including some where you can’t even buy the wine! (You’d never see that in Napa). While the tastings were not with food, each day (we did two full days each time we went with him) he will take you to a fantastic local place for lunch, honestly last time when we did the Graves area we ate lunch at a small farmhouse type place and one of the best meals we had in France that year. Cannot recommend him or his tour enough. Good luck.
Posted by
Puyallup, WA
136 posts
Although these kinds of experiences are thin in France I can recommend bar at Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux. It is right in the city center and offers a wide variety of wines by the glass and very nice cheese or meat plates. The servers are generally students at the school and are quite willing to discuss the characteristics of each wine. Prices are very good but it does add up :). The place is especially busy around noon to mid afternoon. Come early or late or expect to wait a bit. The wine is by the more or less full glass so I recommend you each get a different wine and share tastes.
You do fine wine bars in the cities but usually open only in the late afternoon and evening for "happy hour(s)".
As you are probably aware unlike the multiple wines available for tastings in Napa most wineries in France make only one wine. So, you can taste only their current offering or perhaps two vintages if you are lucky. That's it.
Enjoy, Robbie
Posted by
Washington DC
28082 posts
I don't like wine so this is just a suggestion for further research on your part. Bordeaux has a large, modern Cite du Vin. Its website has a page with links for wine tours: https://www.laciteduvin.com/en/wine-tours
There's an indoor prepared-food market very near the Cite du Vin. I saw a lot of interesting things there. Unfortunately, seating is limited, and there's not even a lot of space at stand-up tables.
Posted by
L'Occitanie, France
10625 posts
Reserve in advance for l'École du Vin that Robbie mentioned. We were never able to get in.
Posted by
Florida (previously California)
3990 posts
I second the suggestion of DMJ Wineworks. It is a pricey tour but I have never met a person with more wine knowledge. My husband loves Cabernet Sauvignon so I decided that a wine tour in the Bordeaux region would be a good birthday gift. We did a private tour in 2017 and it cost $520 and was totally worth it. Before the tour, we received an email asking for information like the number of visits we wished to make in a day, how long we have been enjoying wine, what types of wine we preferred, whether we had been to Bordeaux before, etc. We plan to do another tour for my husband's birthday when we are in France next year. And that is really saying something because as I wrote above the last one cost $520.