Small-group wine tours on Dante Minutello · Wine Tours with a Sommelier

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.

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.