I’m really pleased to present this programme of great wine tours that I’ve designed and are operated by Kirker Holidays.
In Autumn 2026, I’ll be leading wine tours to Rioja & Ribera del Duero and Champagne (in the roughly the same slots as Autumn 2025).
Eastern Sicily is now in 2027. Wine Tours to Champagne, Rioja & Northern Spain will be repeated regularly. Georgia and South Africa are still under discussion.
Champagne
Sicily
On this great Champagne tour, you’ll have special visits to the ‘caves’ of some of the most prestigious Champagne marques including Bollinger and Taittinger.
You will also be introduced to the excellent smaller houses Philipponnat and Gosset and top grower-producers Vilmart and Henri Goutorbe.
Highlights will include the lunch with Gosset and a tasting and dinner at Taittinger’s chateau outside Epernay, Château de la Marquetterie.
Also, I’ll give a couple of master classes showing more top cuvées and some more, fascinating facets of Champagne.
I’ve led several hundred wine tours to Champagne over the years, have many friends here and know the region intimately.
Day 1.
Mid-morning departure on Eurostar London – Lille and the on to Reims by executive coach.
(This is the fastest way to get to Reims from London).
Check in 4* hotel central Reims for 3 nights.
Introduction tutoured tasting of 6 great champagnes.
Followed by dinner with wines (included).
Day 2.
Morning visit to Vilmart, a leading small Champagne estate. Vilmart, who are great believers in using the traditional barrels to make their wines. Their wines are exquisite.
Visit the great Bollinger, to taste their superb Champagnes.Our tour and tasting will be followed by lunch when we will appreciate fabulous champagnes including “Grand Année” and “RD”. This will prove that Bollinger’s champagnes are great gastronomic wines.
We return to Reims with free time to explore the city and to enjoy the Christmas Market.
Early evening tasting of several very different Rose Champagnes.
Dinner is not included tonight, but you are welcome to join me at one of the traditional bistrots near the market.
Day 3.
Visit Champagne Gosset, the oldest of all Champagne Houses, for a tour of their cellars and tasting.
After free time for lunch, we have a guided tour of the magnificent Reims Cathedral, the setting for the coronation of many monarchs of France.
This evening, we have a tasting at Taittinger’s cellars in Reims which date back to the Romans. Afterwards, we head to their historic 18th century Chateau de la Marquetterie. Here in beautiful surroundings, we have a fabulous private dinner with the courses paired with Taittinger’s top cuvées.
Day 4.
Visit Champagne Philipponnat, where we will enjoy a superb line up of their great Champagnes over lunch.
Return to London by Eurostar from Lille, arriving early evening.
This tour will be repeated in 2025. The itinerary will be similar, but not exactly the same.
We taste somewhere around 35 to 40 Champagnes during the tour, exploring many different styles and from a fabulous array of Champagne producers. See the amazing list of Champagnes tasted on a previous tour Click Here
This tour was featured by The Sunday Times as one of their ‘50 Great breaks in France‘.
A superb trip through Rioja and Old Castille enjoying the legendary hospitality of the bodegas, visiting established greats, top single estates and rising stars.
In Rioja, we’ll visit some of Spain’s most interesting bodegas such as single vineyard specialists Bodegas Ostatu and the CVNE group, first their ‘state of the art’ Viña Real winery, then at their single estate Contino. The other Rioja bodegas we’ll visit are the superb Ostatu and the super classy Castillo de Cuzcurrita. We stay at the wine estate Eguren Ugarte.
In Ribera del Duero, visits include a tasting at the superb Dominio de Cair and Fernandez-Rivera at their ‘Condado de Haza’, (tasting also their other famous wines, including ‘Pesquera’).
On the last day, in Rueda, our last visit is with ‘natural’ radicals, Bodegas Micro Bio, a surprise great hit over last couple of years with their wines with names like ‘Brutal’, Fragile and ‘Verdecco Republic’. – All jolly exciting!
Outline Itinerary
Day 1. AM flight (BA) London – Bilbao.
On to Lagurdia in Rioja by exec coach. 4* hotel for 3 nights. Visit Bodegas Eguren Ugarte (optional) followed by tasting dinner with their wines.
Day 2. Visit Bodegas Ostatu and taste the top wines in their range. Visit CVNE’s Vina Real and lunch at CVNE’s great single estate, Contino.
Evening in Laguardia. Tapas dinner with more outstanding Riojas which I’ll chose. (included)
Day 3. Visit in Haro to the star traditionalists, Muga exploring their superb range.
Lunch in Haro at the traditional Meson ‘El Terete’, master roasters of lamb, (and one of Hemingway’s favourite haunts). Accompanied by wines from Muga, Lopez de Heredia and Remelluri.
Afternoon visit to the Vivanco Wine Museum in Briones.
Evening free. Option of going into Laguardia.
Day 4. Visit a star small estate producer in Rioja Alta, Castillo de Cuzcurrita whose wines have stunned us with their grace, elegance and sheer excellence.
Continue to Old Castille. We stop in Burgos, with time for lunch and a visit to the Cathedral, where many of the kings of Castille and El Cid are buried. Continue to Ribera del Duero and check into our 4* hotel in Penafiel.
Evening visit to Condado de Haza. Dinner will be accompanied by wines from the bodegas owed by the Fernandez-Rivera family, including the famous Ribera del Duero “Pesquera” Reserva
Day 5. Morning visit to the excellent Dominio de Cair, whose wines have stunned us in all previous tastings.
After this we’ll stop in nearby Aranda de Duero.
Our next visit is to another of the great traditional Ribera bodegas, Hermanos Perez Pasquas, makers of the famous “Viña Pedrosa”. We’ll taste several of their wines, which are on superb form, over a (thankfully) light tapas lunch.
Later, we’ll have a dinner featuring wines of Rueda and further Riberas.
Day 6. Visit in Rueda to ‘natural wine’ pioneer Micro Bio, who own some of the oldest vines in Spain.
We round up the tour with Roast suckling pig lunch at the great ‘Meson Duque’ in Segovia, accompanied by wines of Rueda, Toro & Castilla.
Early evening flight Madrid/London.
Extension available in Madrid or Bilboa before the tour.
Sicily is the crossroads of the Mediterranean and waves of successive conquerors – from the Phoenicians to the Ancient Greeks to the Normans, have left behind their cultural legacies. Today, this is visible in the architecture, the wonderful and varied food – and, of course, the wine.
Sicily is one of the engines of the Italian wine industry producing twice as much as New Zealand. Vineyards thrive on the low plains, the mountains, volcanic slopes and offshore islands. We will explore the rich variety of wines produced on the east coast of Sicily, from the southern tip of the island to the slopes of Mount Etna.
The superb new tour is based in Taormina and Syracuse, two of Sicily’s most beautiful towns. It explores the high-quality wines of Mount Etna and the west of the island.
The superb line up of wine producers includes COS, Benanti, Tenute delle Terre Nere, Barone di Villagrande, Planeta and Enza La Fauci.
We’ll delve into Sicily’s famous gastronomy which I rank as Italy’s most diverse and interesting. We’ll also visit some of the most important historical and cultural sites on this amazing and beautiful island.
Long before the wines of Sicily became well known, I led the first consumer wine tour of the island, in the early 1990’s, there were only a handful of estates on Etna, whereas now, there are approaching 200.
I’m really pleased to be taking this wine tour with its strong emphasis on the super high-quality wines of Mount Etna.
Day 1. Fly London – Catania
Transfer to Siracusa where we stay in a 4* hotel in the Baroque Centre, the Ortygia.
Day 2. Noto & COS.
This morning, we visit the beautiful city of Noto and have a lunch and tasting at the famous estate of COS. Evening free in Siracusa.
Day 3. Morning. Explore the ancient site of Siracusa.
Visit and lunch with the Benanti family on the southern slopes of Mount Etna tasting their wonderful wines.
Continue to Taormina, where we stay on the Lido.
Day 4. Etna
Our first visit is to Tenute delle Terre Nere, a top estate on the north side of Etna.
We then continue up the volcano to Barone di Villegrande. Etna is a hotbed of organic, sustainable and natural winemaking. and Villegande were the original organic estate here. They are high on the east facing flank. We enjoy lunch here.
Return Taormina. I’ll lead an expedition to the upper town this evening to a favourite restaurant.
Day 5. Mamertino di Milazzo and Faro.
These two regions in the northeast corner of Sicily were considered premier crus by the Romans. They are enjoying a full-on revival with fascinating wines coming out.
Here, we hope to visit the local arm of the excellent firm, Planeta. Our last lunch will be with the wonderful Enza La Fauci.
Day 6.
Return flight from Catania.
Extension available in Sicily.
Gone ahead Opera & Wine in Vienna
Provisional Date - February 2027
Kirker Wine Tours
Something close to my heart; a tour combining superb wines and great opera, in this case, Vienna.
Day 1. Morning BA flight Heathrow. Check into 5* Hotel Bristol in the centre of Vienna.
This afternoon, we had a guided tour at the Vienna State Opera, is close to our hotel. Dinner was paired with a selection of fine Austrian wines, which I introduced.
Day 2. Morning visit to the Belvedere Palace with its works by Austrian artists.
Lunch was at one of Mayer-am-Pfarrplatz, one of Vienna’s best Heurige, (wine-estate-taverns), where Beethoven stayed while he worked on his 3rd & 9th Symphonies. The wines were impressive and showed how far Vienna wines have come in the past few years.
Evening: Puccini’s Tosca at the Vienna State Opera. This was a stunning production in every way.
Day 3. This morning we visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum. After this, we followed the Danube upstream to Krems, where we stopped for lunch. In the afternoon, we visited Weingut Rainer Wess for a tasting of their excellent Grüner Veltliners and dry Rieslings.
We continued to Schloss Gobelsburg, described as “one of the great wine estates of the world”. We enjoyed a wine-tasting, followed by dinner at an excellent restaurant nearby.
Day 4. Today was devoted to Lower Austria. We started at the medieval town of Rust near Neusiedlersee, and at Weingut Feiler-Artinger, had a tasting including their famous sweet botrytis ‘Ruster Ausbruch’. Stunning.
We continued to Eisenstadt, where we have lunch in the grounds of the Esterházy Palace, before visiting the Palace, itself. This was where Joseph Haydn came to work as Kapellmeister in 1761.
In the evening there was an optional opera, Bizet’s Carmen at the State Opera.
Day 5. There was an optional visit the Mozart House, where he wrote Le Nozze di Figaro. There was also time for morning coffee and cakes at the Sacher or one of the other famous cafes.
Later in morning we went to the Vienna Woods Thermen Wine Region we had a vineyard visit followed by a wine-tasting and a lunch at the top wine estate here, Weingut Johanneshof Reinisch. The wines, especially the Pinot Noir, were seriously impressive.
Continued to airport. BA flight to Heathrow
SOUTH AFRICA
Call re possible tourWe’re planning a great wine holiday to South Africa visiting Constantia, Swartland, Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Elgin, Bot River and Hemel-en Aarde regions.
The itinerary will include classic and rising star wineries such as Buitenverwachting, Klein Constantia, Meerlust, AA Badenhorst, Jordan, Thelema Mountain, Reyneke, Kannonkop, Rupert, GlenWood, Le Lude, Vergelegen, Paul Cluver, Hamilton-Russell and Creation.
It will stay in good hotels in Cape Town Waterfront, Stellenbosch or Franschhoek and Hermanus.
The South African wine industry holds an anomalous position in the New World, for it’s actually older than the Medoc!
That having been said, it’s almost unrecognisable from the industry of 40 years ago. The ‘Cape Dutch’ farmhouses are a constant, but the winemaking has changed out of all recognition, areas that used to push out fortified plonk now revel in their ‘regionality’ and the industry we see today is socially conscious, sustainable and highly responsible.
Please note that the wine cellars mentioned are not at this stage guaranteed. In most cases though, they have been spoken to and have agreed in principle.
Rioja & Northern Spain Wine Tour, October 2026
Champagne Tour early December. 2026.
Eastern Sicily and Etna Wine Tour 2027
A ground-breaking Republic of Georgia Wine Tour is planned, hopefully for 2027 (tbc)
A superb Wine Tour of South Africa is planned, hopefully for February 2027 (tbc)
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