If you’re an enthusiastic wine-tourist, or would like to be, you need to meet Wine Travel Guides. The venture was launched in 2007 to offer wine lovers the essential information for planning a private wine tour. There are now 50 regularly updated micro-region guides to download or view online, including 2 new ones on Tuscany. It’s a well-timed expansion: the region was recognised this month for excellence in wine tourism.
An annual subscription offering unlimited access to all 50 guides is £49, or download a single guide for £7.50.
The two Tuscany mini-guides are packed with just the sort of detailed wine tourism information likely to be missing from a mainstream guidebook. Author Michèle Shah has an impressive pedigree in Italian wine, and shows it off with plenty of winemaking and DOC(G) knowledge. There’s just the right portion of technical nuggets for a proper enthusiast.
The Chianti/San Gimignano mini-guide helps you visit a couple of fine estates that also made the cut for my forthcoming book—including Badia a Coltibuono and Vicchiomaggio—but also several of which I wasn’t aware. I’ll be stopping by next time, for sure.
The Montalcino/Montepulciano guide has broad coverage of the heights that Sangiovese hits in southern Tuscany. On top of that, both recommend select places to stay and eat, as well as to shop for wine, food and artisan souvenirs—many of which I can vouch for, too. The detailed food and wine glossaries are invaluable; advice on matching local dishes with the perfect regional wine is an ingenious touch.
“The idea is to have 3 more Tuscany guides, making 5 in total. One by Michèle Shah is planned for mid-summer, probably to be called ‘Between Florence and Lucca’; later there will be 2 to the Tuscan coast areas,” explains Wink Lorch, who founded and runs Wine Travel Guides. “Eventually we will extend the guides to cover other key Italian wine regions like Piedmont, Friuli and Umbria.”
There are occasional gripes, of course: travel guides are personal things, especially for a guidebook writer. I’d like a bit of help choosing a winery or hotel when I don’t have time to see them all. Even a crude star system works for me. The guide needs a proofread, and if I’m being pedantic it should be trattorie not trattorias; ditto with contrada.
One or two out-and-out errors have slipped through: there are no Pietro Lorenzetti frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, Banchi di Sopra originates at Piazza Salimbeni, not by San Domenico. The main street in Cortona isn’t the “Corso”, but Via Nazionale (sometimes nicknamed “flat street” because it’s the only one in town that is). Montalcino’s Consorzio moved from the address provided a year or so ago, and the driving directions from Rome are wrong.
Compared to the precision of the wine-related information, the “regular” tourist advice is a touch vague in places.
Montepulciano’s Bravio delle Botti, costumed shenanigans in the usual Tuscan style, is a curious omission from the festival section, given that it involves racing wine barrels up the town’s precipitous Corso.
So, my overall impression is of a guide that doesn’t quite deliver on the (non-wine related) travel side of its promise. But I’ve not seen any impartial source that’s quite as good at helping me plan an independent wine tour round Tuscany. If you know one, enlighten me in the comments below. But it’ll have to go some to beat my Wine Travel Guide.
* Follow Wink Lorch, founder of Wine Travel Guides, on Twitter for plenty of wine trivia plus occasional offers and competitions.
* Register at Wine Travel Guides to claim your free sample guide.
Tags: chianti, hotels, montalcino, montepulciano, producers, san gimignano, siena, websites, Wine
#1 written by Wink Lorch March 13th, 2009 at 08:34
Thanks for such a great ‘warts and all’ review – really appreciated.
I will certainly give these guides a ‘good proofread’ and make corrections in the next few days – the great thing about on-line guides as opposed to print is that we can correct so quickly and easily.
If any of your blog readers wish to subscribe, I’m happy to offer them a promotional code to give 20% discount off the Gold full access subscription (and slightly less of Silver/Bronze). Simply use the Contact form on the website and tell me where you’ve read about the guides before you subscribe and I’ll email you a code!
#2 written by Free Travel Guides August 4th, 2009 at 17:29
Great review! I will keep an eye out for the vague tourist advice, but am happy to know that the wine information is thorough and detailed.