When is the best time of the year to tour Tuscany to see vineyards ready for harvesting of grapes?
Which vineyards can we visit in a day or two, from Siena?
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23574 posts
Depending on the grape it can be mid Sept through Oct. Many wineries especially the smaller one do not like having visitors at harvest time. Too busy and your get in the way. Google wineries and Siena -- there are a couple of dozen. Review some past copy of Wine Spectator or similar magazines and or their web site for suggestion. A few years ago WS listed the ten best wineries around Florence. We hit eight of them.
Posted by
OP
118 posts
Thank you Frank.
How did you visit these wineries in Tuscany? Did you rent a car? or did you go thru any tour operators? We are senior citizens from the USA and have never driven outside of the USA. Not sure if we would rent a car there.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23574 posts
We had a car and most of the recommended wineries were small. With GPS it was fairly easy to do. However, you do have to have advance reservations. We stopped at one winery, not on our list, without a reservation. There was no one around but they still would not allow is in because we didn't have a reservation. Some of the wineries had a restaurant associated with them that offered wine pairing meals --one time five courses. We did a couple. Great experiences but expensive.
Most of the wineries we visit would only handle cars. The bigger wineries that can handle buses will have lots of buses with tourist. The TI in Florence will have escorted wine tours. The bus tours will be a little less friendly but should give you a decent view of the wineries.