Small Group Gourmet Bordeaux Day Trip from Paris with Wine Tastings

Your day trip begins early in the morning in front of Montparnasse train station where you'll meet your guide and 14 companions for the day. Paris to Bordeaux usually takes a half day, but by taking a high-speed train, you'll arrive in Bordeaux city in just two hours. From there it's a short ride on a private minibus to the town of Saint-Émilion, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the 2nd century, the Romans planted grape vines here and the townsfolk have been in the wine business ever since. You'll stroll the quaint streets and peek inside the caves beneath the town that guards a king's ransom of aging wine.

For your first tasting, you'll step into a local winery in the center of the town in order to see the wide variety of wines produced in Bordeaux and enjoy a little snack. After a tour of the ancient cellars, you'll taste two traditional wines from the region.

Your next stop on this Bordeaux Wine Tour is a nearby chateau where you'll tour the vineyard and learn how Bordeaux's microclimate is responsible for creating its world-class red wines. You'll also be treated to a tour of the chateau's scent garden, where you can test the sensitivity of your palate on the edible plants that contain many of the same scents and flavors you'll find in Bordeaux wines. You'll then head over to an ancient tower on the premises to taste two of their wines.

After your tasting, you'll enjoy an all-inclusive lunch of local meat and produce on a lovely terrace overlooking the vineyards. The menu changes seasonally, but it's always farm-fresh, delicious, and topped off with another glass of wine.

After seeing a large-scale wine producer, it's time for something a little more intimate. Your next stop is a family-operated vineyard that is home to some of the oldest grapevines in Bordeaux. During your tour, the owner will tell you the surprising story of these vines and how they saved much of the French wine industry from certain ruin. Then you will get to sample some of the produce, including a wine that is still aging, so you can see how much the flavors change, and two whites, one of which is made with grapes from some of the oldest vines in France. As a special treat, you'll also try a claret, which is a very old style of Bordeaux wine that nearly died out, but is now being revived by the region's vintners.

By this point you'll have eaten and drank quite a bit so you'll settle onto the bus back to Bordeaux city, followed by a train back to Paris. You'll arrive in Montparnasse by 8.30pm (or a little later on Saturdays), just in time to grab dinner and maybe another drink or two in the City of Lights.