Somebody has to taste them. Might as well be you.
Which Douro day really stops at two quintas. What an hour in the Pilsen cellars costs. Whether the Jameson ticket earns a Dublin morning. Reviews of the tastings you can book, country by country and glass by glass.
Four tastings that shape the whole trip around them.
A river valley terraced by hand, a brewery older than the republic it stands in, a distillery with a queue out of the door, and an afternoon in the Chianti hills.
01The valley dayDouro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchPorto out to the Douro by road, back down it by boat, with two quinta tastings and lunch between the two.
02The brewery morningPilsner Urquell Brewery Tour with Beer TastingPilsen gave pale lager its name in 1842. The tour finishes in the sandstone cellars where it is still lagered.
03The distillery hourJameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with TastingsThrough the old Bow Street stills and out at the bar, where the tasting is set up as a comparison rather than a shot.
04The Tuscan afternoonSmall-Group Wine Tasting Experience in the Tuscan CountrysideA working estate, a small group and enough time between pours to sit and look at the hills.
Italy, Spain, Portugal, France: four countries, four different afternoons.
The same idea is paced and priced differently in each one. What a seat costs before you book the flight, and what is actually in the glass when you get there.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch
ItalyChianti and Montepulciano estates, usually with lunch running long.
SpainCava cellars behind Barcelona, bodegas and a tapas counter after.
PortugalPort lodges in Gaia in an hour, or the Douro for the whole day.
FranceSaint-Émilion and Médoc châteaux, and the chalk cellars of Champagne.
All 595 tastings, country by country →
Wine, beer, spirits: what leads each list.
Nearly every trip ends up in one of the three. These are the three most booked tastings across all of them, and what it costs to sit down at each.
Wine Tasting Tours
from $14
- 1Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunchfrom $82
- 2Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruisefrom $101
- 3Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tastingfrom $41
Six countries that built a day out around a glass.
Schist terraces above the Douro, Chianti an hour from Florence, cava cellars behind Barcelona, the Médoc châteaux, American wine counties, and the Australian valleys close enough to the city for a bus. Each with the best tasting in it.
The cellar day is the one people come home talking about.
Out of the city by nine, down a gravel track, into a room fifteen degrees colder than the car park. Three pours, a lunch that runs long, and a bus back that nobody has to drive.
The eight tastings the most people have already sat down to.
Every drinks tour on the site →The ones that fill first, and what each of them puts in front of you for the money.
1
Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch
Travel from Porto to Peso da Régua and Pinhão for vineyard views, Port tastings, a traditional lunch with Douro wine, and a one-hour Douro River cruise. Guides such as Igor, Miguel, Ricardo, and Melina keep the day lively and informative. Hotel pickup is optional, and private or small-group formats are available.
From · $82
Read our review →
2
Chichen Itza, Cenote & Valladolid Tour with Tequila and Lunch
from $34
3
Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise
from $101
4
Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $54
5
Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tasting
from $41
6
Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour
from $45
7
Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $26
8
Small-Group Wine Tasting Experience in the Tuscan Countryside
from $107
What a tasting costs, from a counter pour to a private cellar.
Every tasting here, grouped by the price of a seat. A good number of the best ones come in under the bottle you would have bought at home.
Cellar visits, brewery tours and city tastings that fit inside an afternoon.
The full day: a valley, two or three estates, lunch, and somebody else driving.
Private guides, château lunches and the older vintages worth opening once.
Three places where the drink built the landscape.
Anyone can line up a flight on a bar. Terraces cut into schist by hand, a sandstone cellar that gave a beer style its name, and copper pot stills nobody has replaced in two centuries are harder to get to.
Schist, by hand, since 1756
The Douro was fenced off as a demarcated wine region in 1756, to stop the port trade being watered down, which makes it the oldest on earth. The terraces are cut into schist and held up with dry stone, the slopes are too steep for machines, and the barrels still travel down to the lodges in Gaia to age. Almost every day trip runs the same shape: two quintas, lunch, an hour on the river.
- 1Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,061 reviews
- 2Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 12,920 reviews
- 3Douro Valley with Winery Lunch, Tastings & Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 7,002 reviews
The lager cellars
Pilsen brewed the first pale lager in 1842 and the style walked off with the town’s name. The tour worth booking ends below ground, in nine kilometres of sandstone cellars cut for cold storage before refrigeration existed, where a few barrels are still lagered in oak for tasting. It sits at around two degrees all year. Take a jacket; the cellar does not warm up for visitors.
- 1Guided Tour & Boat Ride with Optional Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 3,894 reviews
- 2Pilsner Urquell Experience & Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 3,480 reviews
- 3Brewery Tour with 3 Kölsch Beer Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 3,108 reviews
Copper nobody replaced
Irish and Scottish houses kept their copper pot stills long after the rest of the world moved to continuous columns, and that decision is most of what you taste. The tours walk the mash tun, the washbacks and the still house in that order, then finish at a bar with three glasses in front of you rather than one. The comparison is the part the guided ticket is actually for.
- 1Jameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 4,859 reviews
- 2Dublin Jameson Distillery Bow St. Tour and Tasting 45 mins★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,690 reviews
- 3Dublin Jameson Distillery and Guinness Storehouse Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,608 reviews
Four tastings that will not wait for you.
Most of a drinking trip can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timetables set by production and daylight, not by whoever turns up.
- 01Douro Valley w/ Boat Tour, Wine Tasting & LunchPorto leaves for the valley once, and early. The river slot and the winery lunch are booked with the seat, not decided on the day.
- 02Jameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with TastingsDistillery tours go out as timed groups with a hard cap. Weekend slots close first and there is no standby queue at the gate.
- 03Pilsner Urquell Experience & Beer TastingA brewery schedules visitors around production, so the cellar tasting happens at a handful of fixed times a day.
- 04Cité du Vin Entry Ticket and Wine TastingEntry runs on timed slots, and the tasting on the top floor belongs to the slot you booked rather than the queue.
Four things that decide whether a tasting works.
Age at the door: twenty-one in the United States, eighteen across most of Europe, and photo ID gets asked for. Getting home: if the estate is an hour out of town, take the tour with the transfer rather than the hire car. Harvest: September and October are the busiest months and the most interesting, though a few cellars close to visitors while they press. And check what a pour means here — three tastes at a counter and a six-glass sit-down are both sold as a tasting.
Whiskey, tequila, rum: tastings where the bottle has an address.
A distillery visit is a factory tour that happens to end well. Bow Street in Dublin, the agave fields out of Guadalajara, the Bacardí pavilion across the bay from San Juan, and the Speyside stills.
Walk into every still house →
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