Try the crushed Cabernet scrub, for example, and you can sample the terroir inside and out. The five-star Les Sources de Caudalie hotel has a two-star Michelin restaurant and a spa offering a variety of treatments, often involving grape produce. You might even see a horse ploughing in-between the vines. But a tour focusing on the estate’s biodynamic ethos could have wider appeal. The chance to be a winemaker for a couple of hours and fiddle around (supervised, of course) in the winery and cellar might be aimed more at wine geeks than those with a passing interest. This Pessac-Léognan estate has won a lot of tourism awards down the years, so no surprise to see it included here. Park open most of the year, Wednesday to Sunday, 10am-6pm tickets from €10 (children €6). It’s just off the main A6 between Lyon and Mâcon, or a local train to Romanèche-Thorins will drop you straight in the park. The 100 vintage drinks advert posters from 1890 to 1950 are practically worth the admission fee alone. The gardens, open from April to September, are a good place for a stroll or picnic (or aimless juvenile charging about), and kids who aren’t interested in the winemaking centre can ride pedal bikes or play crazy golf instead. But if you’re in (or passing through) Beaujolais, Hameau Duboeuf should keep both parties happy.īilling itself as ‘Europe’s first wine theme park’, Hameau Duboeuf tries hard to make wine – and wine culture – digestible, not least in a 4D cinema where you can ‘fly’ over the crus of Beaujolais. Credit: Jeff Pachoud / AFP / Getty ImagesĬhildren, it’s safe to say, aren’t likely to be interested in most wine-themed visits, so options for wine-loving parents with little ’uns in tow are pretty limited. Students visit the Hameau Duboeuf ‘wine theme park’ in Beaujolais. In their Cave aux Coquillages (‘cellar of seashells’), they have put together a globally respected collection of more than 300 prehistoric shells – some of them unnervingly large – encased and preserved in limestone from 45 million years ago, when France’s coolest wine region was a tropical beach. And at Champagne Legrand-Latour in Fleury-la-Rivière, just northwest of Epernay, the team are keen to show you what it’s all about. Champagne Legrand-Latour, ChampagneĮvery wine lover knows that Champagne’s terroir is all about limestone. Open every day, 10am-5pm, tickets from €24. They can add a uniquely thought-provoking, amusing, poignant, and occasionally baffling element to your visit. These are on display all year round (apart from changeover times), mostly 30m below ground, where Pommery’s famous ‘crayères’ (old chalk pits) form excellent galleries for contemplation. As well as the art nouveau/art deco Villa Demoiselle building, there are curated exhibitions of artworks from local and international artists. But it’s the non-wine elements that make this one stand out – particularly for those visitors who are less into wine. Lots of the grandes marques in Champagne have impressive visitor experiences (Taittinger just down the road is very good, for instance: ).
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