We Rally in Chianti for Next Wine Tour: Tuscany

Last Saturday during Wine Thing 2016–with nearly 200 wine fanatics bouncing off the walls–I was deluged with questions about our next Carpe Vino wine tour.  We announced the trip a few weeks ago, but this year we’re headed for Tuscany–10 days and nine nights of wine, food and art–in that order.

This will be our third event, following our 2013 tour of Spain and last year’s adventure in Provence.  We’re partnering again with Matthew Brumley, principal at  Earthbound Expeditions of Bainbridge Island, WA.  My job was to flesh out the specific goals of the trip and the rough itinerary (including many of the wineries we’ll visit), along with handling the marketing and participant recruiting.  With incredible professional aplomb, Matthew is responsible for all logistics, from booking hotels to making dinner reservations to organizing ground transportation.  His is a mammoth task, including handling all financial transactions.

For our next foray abroad, The Great Wine Estates of Tuscany & Beyond (click here for all details on the Earthbound site), we’re focused on the back roads and small towns of Italy’s viticultural sweet spots.  Beyond Chianti, we’ll immerse ourselves in the wineries and culinary delights of places like Siena, Montepulciano, Montalcino and Oriveto.  We start in Chianti and end in Rome.

If you’ve never been on an organized tour, trust me, it is an awesome way to experience a place.  I’ve traveled the world and logged more than a million miles on United Air Lines, and I was mostly on my own.  With our tours, however, all you’ve got to do is relax and go along for the ride.  No hassles with figuring out where to go or how to get there.  Roll up to a hotel in our luxury coach and you get handed a rpp, key.  Visit a museum and walk right in.  Leave a restaurant with the group and someone else worries about the check.

The flip side is, there is plenty of time for “personal discovery,” when you can find your own special restaurant or just relax at the hotel.  From my perspective, the cost is very competitive. . .around $3,900 per person, plus airfare.  Breakfast and either lunch or dinner are included each day, as are hotels, ground transportation and most cultural site entries.

We’re already 50% sold out, with room for just 12 more people.  We’ve got four couples returning from our Provence trip, and I’ll be glad to put you in touch with any of our alumni for additional insights into what to expect.

Later this spring we’ll be hosting an icebreaker in the Wine Mine at Carpe Vino so that everyone can meet.  We’ll be serving Italian wines and Chef Alexander will dazzle you with tasty bites that will leave you lusting for more.  After the tour, we’ll reconvene in the Wine Mine for a prix-fixe dinner based on what we discovered in Tuscany and Umbria.

Visit the Earthbound Expeditions web site to sign up; contact me if you would like more information.  Better hurry because this trip will sell out soon!