Sommelier-led wine tours in small groups, cellar by cellar on Dante Minutello · Wine Tours with a Sommelier

About Dante Minutello

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

I am Dante Minutello, a sommelier and wine-tour guide based in Brno, in South Moravia, Czechia. I have spent over a decade in wine and, before that, years in restaurant kitchens. Today I take small groups to cellars in Armenia, Georgia, Italy, France, Austria and my own Moravia, and I am the person pouring at every stop.

Contact Dante

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The buttons above are the whole system: email if you think in paragraphs, WhatsApp or Telegram if you prefer a quick exchange. There is no form; it all lands with me.

What helps in a first message#

You do not need a finished plan. A few lines let me answer with something concrete, not a brochure:

Imprint and privacy

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Who runs this site#

This site belongs to me, Dante Minutello, sommelier and wine-tour guide in Brno, Czechia. The legal operator is:

[Trading name]
[Registered address]
IČO: [IČO]
DIČ / VAT: [VAT status]

Registered in Czechia. Responsible for all content: Dante Minutello. Ways to reach me are on the contact page.

Photo credits

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

I travel with a corkscrew, not a tripod, so most of the photographs on this site are not mine. They come from photographers who released their work under Creative Commons licences or into the public domain. Each image is listed below with the author’s name, the licence and a link to the original file; where I have cropped or resized a picture, the entry says so.

Private and bespoke wine tours

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Every route on this site can run as a private wine tour for 2 to 12 people, on your dates. A private group can take any scheduled departure to Armenia, Georgia, Italy, France, Czechia or Austria as it stands, shorten it, stretch it, or ask me for something new. I am based in Brno, so South Moravia and the Wachau are day trips, and everything else is a flight I take several times a year.

Frequently asked questions about my wine tours

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

These are the questions I am asked most often before someone books a place on one of my small-group wine tours to Armenia, Georgia, Italy, France, Czechia or Austria. Read them with a glass in hand, or skip to the one that matters to you. If your question is not here, write to me from the contact page: I answer myself, in English, Russian, Czech, Armenian or Italian. For the wine itself, start with what natural wine actually is; for the routes, with the tours.

Sepp and Maria Muster and the Opok above Leutschach

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Leutschach is the last village before Slovenia, and the road up to the Schlossberg above it is the kind that makes the driver stop talking. It leaves the Südsteirische Weinstraße, the wine road that has followed these ridges since 1956, and climbs between vines planted so steeply that the rows seem to lean on one another. This is Styria, the humid green south-east of Austria, four hours and a quarter from my door in Brno and forty-five minutes from Graz airport, and it is where Sepp and Maria Muster farm ten hectares of Opok.

Burgundy and Champagne: the classics, with grower eyes

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Champagne and Burgundy are the two most written-about wine regions in France, and I still take small groups there because most visitors only see the front of house. This week goes round the back: two days on the Côte des Blancs with growers who farm their own chalk, after a grande maison’s cellar in Reims so the two schools meet on one table; then four nights in Beaune for whole-cluster Pinot Noir in Morey-Saint-Denis, biodynamic Chardonnay in Puligny-Montrachet, a natural cellar in Pommard and the négociant house under the Collégiale. Paris to Paris, six to eight guests, Chablis for lunch on the way home. The Champagne and Burgundy guides carry the geology; I carry the corkscrew.

Jura and Beaujolais: the natural wine heartland

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The Jura and Beaujolais sit two hours apart on either side of the Saône in eastern France, and between them they hold most of the arguments in natural wine. Arbois still ages Savagnin under a veil of yeast in barrels nobody tops up; in Villié-Morgon, Marcel Lapierre followed the chemist Jules Chauvet and made Gamay without added sulfur from 1981. Seven days, six cellars: a Savagnin specialist that went biodynamic and kept the classic register, a neighbour who puts Trousseau in amphora, a Rotalier cellar of forgotten grapes, two Morgon cellars run as cold rooms, and Château Thivin, the classic answer from the blue stone of Mont Brouilly. Lyon to Lyon, six to ten guests, the table every evening. The Jura and Beaujolais guides carry the geology.

Etna: wines from the volcano

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

On Etna the ground is sometimes younger than the vines standing in it, and that is the reason for this week. Six days on Etna, the volcano in eastern Sicily, Italy, built around the north slope between Randazzo and Solicchiata, where the contrade follow one another along a single road and each sits on its own lava flow. Six estates: four classic houses working in steel and oak, two that ferment in buried terracotta and open lava stone on wild yeasts, with as little added as they can manage. Three nights in Randazzo, one at Milo on the wet east side, one in Catania. Six to ten guests, one grape most of the week, Nerello Mascalese, and Carricante to keep it honest. Catania to Catania.

Friuli and Collio: orange wine at the border

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Orange wine has a home address, and it is a hamlet on a hill above Gorizia. Oslavia, in the Collio of Friuli in north-east Italy, is where Ribolla Gialla went back into open vats with its skins in the 1990s, and where Georgian qvevri were buried in a cellar floor in 2001. This is a five-day route, Trieste to Trieste, with three full days in the Collio and Carso: two among the ponca terraces of Oslavia and Gorizia, one on the limestone plateau above Trieste with the Adriatic in view. Six to ten guests, long tastings, short drives, and a border you cross on foot. I pour the amber wines beside the pale ones from the same hills, because the choice is the lesson.

Piedmont: Barolo, Barbaresco and the Langhe table

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Piedmont is the region that taught me a wine country can be walked. The Langhe hills south of Alba, in north-west Italy, hold Barolo and Barbaresco within 25 kilometres of each other, close enough that we drive twenty minutes and then get out. Six days, five estates and one grape, Nebbiolo, made five ways: large old botti at a classic family house, barriques at the best-known modernist cellar, converted in 1983, long macerations and years of patience at two traditionalists, and a small organic farm on a Barbaresco crest. In late October and November the white truffles are in; in May and June the same route runs green. Turin to Turin, six to ten guests, the table every evening. The Piedmont guide has the geology in detail.

Austria: Wachau, Kamptal and Burgenland's natural cellars

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Austria is the wine country nearest my door: Vienna is an hour and a half from Brno, the Wachau two and a half. This is the route I built to show it in five days without hurrying, six to ten guests, Wednesday to Sunday, Vienna to Vienna. We start on the Danube terraces of the Wachau, turn north into the Kamptal for Riesling on Permian sandstone, drive south-east to the steppe lake of Burgenland for two of the country’s best-known natural farms, and finish in Vienna, where 588 hectares of vines still grow inside the city limits.

Western Georgia: Imereti, Racha and the other qvevri

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Most wine tours of Georgia go east to Kakheti and stop there. This one goes the other way. Imereti, the country around Kutaisi in western Georgia, buries its qvevri in the garden rather than under a cellar floor, calls them churi, and puts back only a fraction of the skins, so its amber wines are paler and its Tsitska and Tsolikouri keep their acid. Up the Rioni from there, Racha makes Khvanchkara, a semi-sweet red from Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli that cold mountain autumns stopped fermenting long before anyone owned a chiller. I built this route around those two ideas, a natural grower’s garden table and a classic house’s steel, and the lighter, walnut-led cooking of the west. If you want Saperavi and Sighnaghi, the Kakheti route is for you; this is the other half of the story.

Georgia: Kakheti, qvevri and the long table

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Georgia taught me that the table comes first and the wine follows it. This is the week I run in Kakheti, eastern Georgia, where about seventy percent of the country’s grapes grow, most of them along the Alazani valley, with one day in Kartli north-west of Tbilisi for contrast. Six cellars: three family maranis that add little or nothing to the qvevri, three classic houses with steel, French oak and a palace. Two nights inside the walls of Sighnaghi, one at a wine estate in Kisiskhevi, three in Tbilisi. Six to ten guests, a long table most evenings, and a tamada at the last of them. Tbilisi to Tbilisi, seven days.

Moravian cellars in a day: private tour from Brno

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This is the day I offer when someone has two nights in Brno and asks what the wine here is actually like. The honest answer takes four cellars. South Moravia starts 40 minutes from my door: first the Velké Pavlovice sub-region, the red-wine and natural-wine heart of Czechia, then the limestone country of Mikulov and Pálava. We visit Milan Nestarec in Velké Bílovice, Ota Ševčík on the Kraví hora at Bořetice, Sonberk above the Nové Mlýny reservoirs and Vinařství Volařík in Mikulov: two natural, two classic, poured in the order that makes the difference easiest to taste. It is a private tour only, two to eight guests, with no fixed departures. You name the date, I check that the four cellars can take us, and the day is yours.

Armenia and Georgia: two cradles of wine in eleven days

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Two countries, both claiming the oldest wine on earth: Armenia’s Areni-1 cave in Vayots Dzor, the oldest known winery, around 4100 BC; Georgia’s pottery from Gadachrili Gora with wine residues of around 6000 BC. I built this route to taste the argument, not settle it: karas in Armenia, qvevri in Georgia, Areni Noir and Saperavi, and a table every evening.

Claus Preisinger and the green roof above Gols

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Gols is where the flat begins. Coming from Vienna the land is done with hills by the time you pass Parndorf, and at Gols, on the north-east shore of the Neusiedlersee, the horizon is a line of reeds and sky. This is Burgenland, the warm, dry, Pannonian corner of Austria: about 2,000 hours of sun a year and a steppe lake 36 km long that averages a metre deep. I had spent the two days before at Karakterre in Eisenstadt, the fair of organic, biodynamic and natural growers, and Gols is about forty minutes around the top of the lake. On 15 May 2026 the car thermometer read 21 °C at 10:00 and the wind was already up, the way it usually is here.

South Moravia: a wine weekend from Brno

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This is the weekend I run from my own front door. Two nights, three days, six to ten guests, and a minibus that leaves Brno at 09:00 on Friday and has you back by Sunday evening. South Moravia holds about 96 percent of the vines in Czechia, most of them within an hour of my flat, and the cellars, not the wineries, are the point: in Velké Bílovice, the largest wine village in the country, nearly every house has a press house above a cellar.

Armenia: Areni, karas and the canyons of Vayots Dzor

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This is the route I run when someone asks me where wine began and wants an answer they can drink. Seven days, Yerevan to Yerevan, most of them in Vayots Dzor, the high valley of the Arpa in southern Armenia, where Areni Noir grows between 1,000 and 1,800 metres and a cave above the road held a working winery around 4100 BC. Three nights in the valley, clay karas beside steel, family tables, and a last day on the slopes of Mount Aragats in Aragatsotn. Six to ten guests, and I pour the old cellars and the new with the same respect.

Loire: Chenin, Cabernet Franc and the natural Anjou

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The Loire is one grape read twice. Chenin Blanc, along the Touraine and Anjou stretch of the river in western France, runs from bone-dry to liquoreux and sparkling, and the same vine gives different answers on the tuffeau limestone around Vouvray and on the schist west of Angers. Cabernet Franc is the red between them, in Chinon and Saumur-Champigny. Six days from Paris, five estates: two classic Chenin cellars facing each other across the river at Vouvray and Montlouis, the Loire’s most patient red at Chacé, then the natural Anjou around Thouarcé and the schist of Savennières. Six to ten guests, a table every evening, the train in and out. The Loire guide has the soils and the appellations in detail.

Gut Oggau and the family with faces on the label

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Oggau am Neusiedler See is two and a half hours from Brno if the ring road around Vienna behaves, and the last twenty minutes are the ones I look forward to. The road comes down off the Leitha hills, the reeds of the Neusiedlersee rise on the left like a green wall, and the villages of the west shore of Burgenland line up with their long yards turned away from the street. This is the warm, flat, sun-heavy corner of Austria, and it is where Eduard Tscheppe and Stephanie Tscheppe-Eselböck have run Gut Oggau since 2007.

Willi Bründlmayer and the Lyra vines of the Heiligenstein

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Langenlois announces itself with vines rather than a sign. The road from Brno crosses the flat Weinviertel for two hours, drops into the Kamp valley north of the Danube, and the hills on both sides are suddenly striped to the top. This is the Kamptal, Austria, and Langenlois, at 219 metres and with about 7,500 people, is usually described as the country’s largest wine-growing town. The Bründlmayer family has been making wine here since 1581.

Lucas Pichler and the precision of the Kellerberg

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

At 08:00 on the last Tuesday of October 2025 the Danube at Oberloiben was still under mist, and the only things above it were the castle ruin at Dürnstein and the top terraces of the Kellerberg, where I could hear secateurs before I could see anyone. Oberloiben is a hamlet on the north bank at the eastern end of the Wachau, the 36 km stretch of Danube gorge between Melk and Krems that is the classic heart of white wine in Austria. The F.X. Pichler estate has stood here since 1905. Its cellar, built in 2009, stands in the vines between the village and Dürnstein, in a Ried called Klostersatz, at about 203 metres.

Bohemia: Mělník, Litoměřice and the Prague vineyards

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Bohemia is the other Czech wine region, and most people, Czechs included, forget it exists. Moravia holds about 96 percent of the country’s vines; Bohemia has the remaining 675 hectares, under four percent, scattered across 75 villages along the Labe (Elbe), the Vltava and the Ohře, with an outlier at Kutná Hora to the east. Officially the region is Čechy, split into Mělnická, 349 hectares around Mělník, and Litoměřická, 326 around Litoměřice and Velké Žernoseky.

Loire: Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc, Vouvray to Chinon

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

The Loire is France’s longest river, and the vineyards I visit sit along its middle stretch, from Tours to Angers, through Touraine and Anjou, with a wider range of wine than any other valley in France can show. On the north bank east of Tours is Vouvray; opposite, between the Loire and the Cher, Montlouis-sur-Loire. Downstream the Vienne comes in under the fortress of Chinon, with Bourgueil across the water. An hour further west is Saumur, with the red-wine villages of Saumur-Champigny behind it: Chacé, Varrains, Champigny. Past Angers the rock changes, and Savennières and the Coteaux du Layon belong to Anjou.

Vienna wine region: Gemischter Satz and the Heuriger

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place: a capital with 588 hectares of vines#

Vienna is the only European capital with a wine region of real size inside its city limits: 588 hectares, most of it on two hills that face each other across the Danube. From Brno it is 90 minutes, which makes Vienna the closest foreign wine region to my door and the base for my Austria tour.

Champagne: Vertus, Avize, Aÿ and the chalk beneath Reims

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Champagne begins about 150 kilometres north-east of Paris. Reims has the cathedral, the offices of the big houses and Gallo-Roman chalk pits under the streets that became cellars. Épernay, 25 kilometres south on the Marne, has the Avenue de Champagne, one street of mansions with roughly 110 kilometres of galleries beneath it. This is the corner of France where wine is a business first and a landscape second, and I say that with affection.

Racha-Lechkhumi: Khvanchkara and Georgia's mountain reds

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Racha-Lechkhumi is the mountain corner of western Georgia: the upper Rioni, between Imereti and the main ridge of the Greater Caucasus. Racha is the eastern half, around Ambrolauri at about 550 metres; Lechkhumi the western, around Tsageri, where the valleys narrow into gorges. It is the smallest wine region I visit anywhere, and the one with the longest approach for its size.

Slovácko wine region: painted cellars and Blatnický roháč

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place: Uherské Hradiště, Strážnice and the villages of the búdy#

Slovácko is the eastern quarter of South Moravia’s wine country in Czechia, and the one my guests know least. It runs from the Morava river plain, south-east of Brno, to the first slopes of the White Carpathians on the Slovak border. The Slovácká sub-region is the third largest of the country’s six, about 4,065 hectares in 2025 across 118 wine villages and more than 5,600 registered growers. Slovácko is smallholder country: a few rows behind the house, a press house at the village edge, wine made for the family and the neighbours first.

Styria: Sauvignon Blanc, Opok and South Styria's wine road

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place: South Styria from Ehrenhausen to Leutschach#

Styria is the green corner of Austria, the south-east, where the last hills before Slovenia are planted so steeply that the rows look drawn with a ruler on a rumpled cloth. It is the country’s third wine region by size, 5,109 hectares in three appellations, and the one that feels least like the Danube: farms, chapels, pumpkin fields and vines.

Tuscany: Chianti Classico, Radda and Montalcino

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Tuscany is the one Italian wine region I treat as an extension rather than a destination. My scheduled routes in Italy go to Piedmont, Friuli and Etna; Chianti Classico and Montalcino are where I take a group that has three or four more days and wants to see what Sangiovese does at home. The region deserves the days; it does not need me to sell it.

Armavir and the Ararat plain