Wine tasting walking tours from Vineyard to Vineyard

Hi cte -

The companies I know of that do something like the kind of trip I think you are after are Explore (explore.co.uk) who do trips in Spain/Portugal and Italy and Headwater Holidays (headwater.com) do vineyard to vineyard trips in France. To the best of my knowledge they are both U.K. based but an investigation of their websites would be the first place to begin to see if what they offer is the kind of trip you are looking for. I’ve never travelled with Headwater but I’ve travelled extensively with Explore for years and always enjoy their itineraries - in fact I’m travelling with Explore in Portugal later this month. I have been on a couple of group trips with Explore that included Americans so there must be some way of booking an Explore trip in the states (through a travel agent or sub contractor?) but because I’m a Brit I’ve never had the need to actually investigate that in any depth. I’m sure an email to either company would advise on how best to approach a booking. Hope you get fixed up!

Ian

Not sure what company would be good to use, etc..

I can't refer you to anyone because I don't know of such a company and I am unsure what services you are looking for if indeed they do exist.

The Mosel River is undoubtedly one of Germany's finest places for scenic hiking and wine tasting. Some of the Mosel towns are described below:

https://www.mosel-inside.de/en/travel-guide/mosel-villages.html

There generally won't be many options for wine tasting in the vineyards, if any - tastings are typically in town.

I have done a modest amount of independent hiking/walking in a handful of different spots. Typically I stay in one town for 2-3 days at a time and do day hikes from that town, starting and ending in the same base town. I either hike one of the "Rundweg" (circuit) trails, or on one-way trails that end in another town with 1) a train station, 2) a bus stop, or 3) a boat dock., one of which I use to return to my base town. Bullay and Traben-Trarbach were both good base towns for doing a hiking loop OR taking one-way hikes, as each town has all three transport options (numerous other towns do as well.) Switching base towns can be done quite easily by train along the Mosel in most cases, but if there's no train service to the town you choose, there will buses instead. The area is very well served by public transportation.

I recall doing a hike from Traben-Trarbach to Bernkastel and returning by bus later in the afternoon to T-T. I could have done a round-trip hike, which is obvious from the map below, but I wasn't that interested in doing so many kms; I probably used the route on the left side of the map, which takes a more direct path to Bernkastel:

https://en.visitmosel.de/hiking/tour/moselsteig-detour-moseltalschanzen

There are too many vineyards in this small area to count; each little plot has a name:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/7b/98/d87b984cb65d8bbe2826891ee017179c.gif

So for me, one advantage of the base-style travel was the flexibility. On any given day, I had a choice of routes, and I could do as much or as little hiking as I wished since there was no pre-planned route with a certain # of kms or a certain incline that I was forced to undertake one day after another. And thanks to the well-developed transport system, it was easy to get back to my base earlier or later in the day, if I needed to. The other advantage was not having to pack up every morning and unpack every evening. When I switched bases from Bullay to T-T, I walked to the station with my bag, took a 20-minute train ride, and dropped my bags at my pre-booked hotel in T-T.

Russ has pretty well laid out the Mosel region, which can be walked but is probably best by bike and train.

Let me suggest the Rhein-Pfalz region of the Rhine, very heavily invested in wine, where you have over 100 small towns and villages you can walk through (or use bikes, or trains). If you stay in one of the larger places, like Bad Durkheim, you have over 30 communities within a 5 km radius. Plus a couple medieval walled villages, really good castle ruins, a couple Roman villas, and even some Celtic archeologic sites. The same hold true of Neustadt (on the winestrasse). But if you want to do this like a European tourist you'll pick a place like Deidesheim, Freinsheim, Kirchheim, Bockenheim, or Edenkoben; all of which have smaller places to stay and which are heavily patronized by tourists from places like Belgium and the Netherlands. This area is very much like Napa Valley (where I have also lived), but it's much more walkable. There are miles of public paths between the villages, and it's not uncommon to see groups of locals walking back and forth between them, usually with the excuse that they need to walk the dog and had to stop for a drink. Especially in the summer this can go until late in the evening.

Well if you are not too particular, you could just stay in a wine village for a night or two and just walk from Winzer to Winzer. Many of these towns and Winzer have small restaurant too. Many speak English. Maybe it comes down to the type of wines you like?

Thank you so much for all of the suggestions! I am excited to research.