What We Look for Before Adding a Winery to a Wine Tour

Why Great Wine Is Only the Beginning of a Chef-Led Wine and Gastronomy Tour

By Chef Marcus Guiliano, Wine & Agave Educator and Founder of VIP Winery Vacations and Aroma Thyme Bistro. Marcus has built direct relationships with producers across major wine regions.

How wineries are chosen for wine tours comes down to three questions. Who owns the winery? Who are the people behind it? Is the wine good enough to represent its region? The tasting room and the packages come second.

The first question I ask before adding a winery to one of our journeys is not simply Is the wine good? I first ask Who owns the winery? Is it among the family-owned wineries that remain independent, part of a massive wine group, owned by a multinational beverage corporation, or a large cooperative producing millions of bottles for supermarkets around the world? Ownership tells me a lot about the experience our guests are likely to have.

There is plenty of technically good wine being made today. Modern equipment, improved vineyard management, experienced consultants, and better winemaking technology have helped raise quality across the industry.

Good wine alone is no longer enough. It is the starting point, not the reason a winery earns a place on our journeys.

For Jamie and me, choosing a winery comes down to three things:

1. Who owns it?
2. Who are the people behind it?
3. Is the wine good enough to represent the region?

The wine matters. Of course it matters, but the people come first.

We Do Not Choose Wineries Because They Are Famous

A recognizable name may help sell a bottle in a grocery store, but it does not automatically create a memorable winery visit. The quality of the welcome still matters more than the recognition of the label.

Some large wineries make very good wine. They may have beautiful estates, historic buildings, polished tasting rooms, professional guides, and impressive tourism departments.

That does not make them bad wineries. It simply means they may not be right for our journeys.

Some wineries have tours every hour, introductory videos, and groups moving through glass corridors. The experience becomes a tourism operation.

Everything is efficient, scheduled, and repeatable. But very little of it is personal.

I have visited wineries where guests had to watch a promotional video before the tour began. I have also walked through facilities built to handle large numbers of visitors.

Many travel professionals walked into those places and saw something impressive. I saw a factory.

The buildings may have been beautiful. The equipment may have been state of the art. The presentation may have been flawless.

We were never going to sit down with the owner, taste from a barrel with the winemaker, or spend three hours over lunch hearing family stories. When tourism becomes a machine, visiting is no longer the point.

Key Takeaway: A famous name sells bottles, not memories. When tours leave every hour and guests move from station to station, you are visiting a tourism operation, and you will never sit down with the owner.

Size Is Not Everything, but It Changes the Experience

The largest winery we have included on one of our journeys produced several million bottles annually. It remains an exception among the producers we usually choose.

Most of the wineries we prefer are far smaller, and many produce a limited number of bottles each year. At that size, tourism is often not a separate division of the business because the family is there to grow grapes and make wine.

There may be no official tasting room, sign outside, online reservation system, or designated tour guide. You are sitting with the owner because the owner is the person who invited you.

A small winery is not automatically a great winery. A large winery is not automatically a bad one. But scale changes what is possible.

A large producer needs a sizable sales team and production staff. It also needs distribution and often a tourism department.

At a smaller family winery, the person pouring may have pruned the vines, worked the harvest, managed the cellar, or bottled that vintage. That changes the conversation.

Key Takeaway: Scale changes what is possible. At 100,000 bottles, the person pouring your wine may have pruned the vines, worked the harvest, and bottled that exact vintage.

Tourism and Hospitality Are Not the Same Thing

The travel industry often defines winery tourism through buildings and scenery. Travel companies often ask whether there is a castle, rolling hills, a beautiful tasting room, bus parking, or a package that guests can purchase online. Those details are easy to sell because they are easy to describe.

Those things are easy to sell, but tourism and hospitality are not the same. Tourism moves people through an attraction, while hospitality welcomes people into a relationship.

For us, hospitality means sitting at a table with a winemaking family. It can mean tasting in a cellar with no visitor center. It can mean hearing from the owner why one vineyard block matters.

It might mean lunch running much longer than planned because nobody wants the conversation to end. Those experiences are difficult to package, and that is exactly why they matter. The hardest experiences to package are often the ones guests remember most.

Moment	Tourism operation	Genuine hospitality
Booking	Select a package and purchase a ticket online	Arranged personally with the owner or winemaker
The visit	Scripted route, promotional video, gift shop	A vineyard walk, a cellar, a family table
The tasting	Five listed wines, poured on schedule	Eight or nine wines, barrel samples, an older vintage from the cellar
The goal	Move guests through the attraction	Welcome guests into a relationship

Key Takeaway: Tourism moves people through an attraction. Hospitality welcomes people into a relationship. That single distinction shapes every winery we choose.

What Genuine Winery Hospitality Looks Like

One of my favorite examples happened at Le Fraghe, an organic family winery near Bardolino. It was our second visit with Matilde, the owner, who conducted the tasting while preparing our lunch. She would pour a wine, explain it, answer our questions, disappear behind a curtain to check the next dish, and then return a few minutes later with another plate.

Jamie and I offered to help, telling her that we could pour the wine, carry plates, or do something useful. Her answer was immediate: “No, no, no. You are my guests.” That is genuine hospitality, not a tourism performance.

It is someone opening their winery, kitchen, and table to people they consider guests. The food does not have to be elaborate; in Italy, even when you say you do not need food, local cheese, charcuterie, bread, and olive oil often appear on the table.

What starts as a tasting becomes a meal, and the wine tastes better because of where you are, who you are with, and what is happening around the table. Wine is never just about what is in the glass; it is about the environment, the friendship, the moment, and the memory.

Key Takeaway: Genuine winery hospitality is Matilde at Le Fraghe pouring wine, cooking lunch, and refusing our help: “No, no, no. You are my guests.”

The Experience Must Be Different From the Standard Tour

We do visit wineries that have tasting rooms and offer public tours. Having a tourism program does not automatically disqualify a winery, but our experience cannot be the same cookie cutter tour offered to everyone else. That is nonnegotiable.

We need something personal. We need time with the owner, the winemaker, a member of the family, or someone deeply connected to the winery.

We may book a tasting that officially includes five wines and find eight or nine wines on the table by the time we finish. Someone may disappear into the cellar and return with an older vintage; we may taste directly from a barrel or tank; or the winemaker may open something that was never part of the scheduled tasting. Those moments happen because the visit is based on a relationship rather than a ticket.

While preparing our Catalonia journey, we contacted Mas Doix in Priorat. The tastings are listed online, but Valenti, the owner, made it clear that we were not supposed to purchase tickets through the website. We were to send our details directly because he would personally handle our visit. That distinction matters: we are not simply buying admission; we are being received.

Key Takeaway: A tasting room does not disqualify a winery. A cookie cutter tour does. Our visits must be personal: extra wines on the table, barrel samples, time with the family.

We Visit the People We Buy From

One of the principles behind VIP Winery Vacations is simple:

We visit the people we buy from.

Jamie and I have owned Aroma Thyme Bistro for more than two decades. Over the years, winery owners, export managers, and winemakers have visited our restaurant.

A wine importer or distributor may call and tell us that a producer from Italy, Spain, or France is in New York. They bring the producer to the restaurant, where we taste the wines and talk about food, vineyards, family, farming, and the restaurant. A relationship begins there.

Sometimes the winery owner invites us to visit before we even ask, and we always warn them that when they invite us, we eventually show up. It may be the following year or five years later, but we remember the invitation.

That relationship often develops in one of three ways. Each path begins with time, trust, and a shared interest in the wine.

Meeting Producers at Aroma Thyme Bistro

A producer visits the restaurant with an importer or distributor. We taste the wines, begin buying them, and develop a rapport.

The winery sees that we are not just looking for a free visit because we support their work through our restaurant. When we eventually arrive with guests, we already know each other.

Working Through Trusted Importers

When we are developing a journey in a particular region, I may contact an importer with a strong regional portfolio. I explain that we are bringing a small group and are looking for an independent, family operated producer. A good importer understands the difference between a winery that sells tourism and a winery that practices hospitality. They make the introduction, and we taste the wines at the restaurant before building the relationship with the producer and eventually bringing a group.

Meeting Owners at Industry Tastings

We attend professional tastings such as Gambero Rosso’s Tre Bicchieri events, Slow Wine tastings, regional wine tastings, importer portfolio events, and other trade gatherings. If we know we are planning a journey to Campania, Piedmont, Catalonia, or another region, we focus on producers from that area. We taste the wine, but we also pay attention to the person standing behind the table.

We ask whether we connect, whether they are passionate, whether they are interested in what we do, and whether we can imagine sitting with that person for several hours. You can often feel when the connection is right.

Key Takeaway: Our winery relationships begin at Aroma Thyme Bistro, through trusted importers, and at trade tastings. We buy the wines and know the people long before we bring guests.

Relationships Create Access That Cannot Be Purchased Online

At Piccolo Ernesto in Gavi, a producer we visit on our Piedmont wine tours, there is no traditional tourism operation or even a sign telling the average traveler where to go. That is part of what makes the visit special. At Domaine Paul Autard in Châteauneuf du Pape, you can sit and taste wine in a setting that feels less like a commercial attraction and more like being received by a family. At Tenuta Santa Maria in Valpolicella, we have spent private time with Giovanni Bertani. The winery may offer public experiences, but our visit is built around our relationship with Giovanni.

The same principle applies wherever we travel across Italy’s wine regions and beyond. The goal is not simply to enter the building; it is to connect with the people responsible for the wine.

Key Takeaway: Insider winery access cannot be added to an online shopping cart. The visit exists because of the relationship, not the ticket.

Sometimes the Best Part Happens After the Winery Tour

One of our most memorable visits was with Beniamino D’Agostino from Botromagno in Gravina in Puglia. The winery building itself was not designed to impress tourists, and that was not the point. Beniamino took us into the vineyards, showed us vines that mattered to him, and then took us to the back of Gravina to look across the cliffs and historic buildings. Just when we thought the experience could not get better, we sat down for lunch.

We ate in the building where his family had lived. The restaurant occupied the first floor, and his family still owned the building.

We spent approximately three hours at the table, talking, laughing, and listening to stories. The wine was part of the experience, but it was not the entire experience. That lunch is what people remember.

We had another experience at Nardini in Bassano del Grappa. A professional guide conducted part of our visit, but afterward Antonio came to meet us with Sharla, a longtime employee we had known who had since retired. Antonio arranged for us to sit together in a private room at the distillery, where the official tour was over but the hospitality continued. We talked, laughed, and shared drinks for another two hours before having dinner at the family’s restaurant near our hotel.

You cannot add that to an online shopping cart. It happens because people know each other.

Key Takeaway: The most memorable moments include a three hour family lunch in Gravina and a private room at Nardini. They happen after the official tour ends.

Why We Do Not Outsource Our Winery Selection

Many travel companies work through destination management companies, local booking agents, or other tour operators. Every company along the way needs to be paid, so that system naturally favors wineries with established tourism programs, group capacity, bus parking, predictable schedules, and commissionable packages.

Those wineries are easier to book and place into an itinerary because they can accommodate a group at 11:00, 1:00, or 3:00. But easy does not always mean memorable.

Earlier in our travel business, we worked with outside companies that helped select and book parts of the itinerary. We learned quickly that their definition of an impressive winery was not always ours. One winery visit in Veneto was so rigid that I was told I could not take photographs inside.

That immediately told me we were in the wrong place. When I visit a producer, I want to share the experience, photograph the winery, tell the story, promote the wine, and show people why the visit matters. We never returned, and I stopped buying the wine.

Experiences like that are one reason Jamie and I now build and manage our journeys ourselves. We choose the wineries, contact the owners, and coordinate the visits ourselves rather than handing a list to a booking company and asking it to fill the schedule.

Key Takeaway: Outsourced itineraries favor wineries with bus parking and commissionable packages. We choose, contact, and coordinate every winery ourselves.

The Owner’s Availability Comes Before the Tasting Room Schedule

Building journeys this way creates logistical challenges. A tasting room may be open seven days a week from 11:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon, while the owner may only be available Tuesday at 2:30. The winemaker may be traveling, the family may be harvesting, or a producer may be unavailable for the entire week we are in the region.

We cannot simply draw a straight line on a map and book whichever wineries fit the driving route. We build the itinerary around people, sometimes changing the order of the entire day, moving a meal, or choosing another producer because the person we want our guests to meet will not be available. It takes more work, but the person matters more than the tasting room.

Key Takeaway: We build each day around people, not driving routes. If the owner is only available Tuesday at 2:30, the itinerary changes.

How Wineries Are Chosen for Wine Tours: Ten Things We Look For

Before we add a winery to a VIP Winery Vacations journey, we look for these qualities:

1. Independent or family ownership
2. People we genuinely respect and enjoy
3. Wine that honestly represents its region
4. A personal relationship with the owner, winemaker, family, or export manager
5. A visit that goes beyond the standard public tasting
6. Access that cannot simply be purchased through an online ticket
7. Genuine hospitality rather than high volume tourism
8. A connection to local food, culture, and community
9. Wines we serve, have served, or would proudly serve at Aroma Thyme Bistro
10. An experience our guests will still talk about years later

Not every winery needs to meet these standards in exactly the same way. But the experience must feel personal.

Key Takeaway: Ten criteria, one test: independent people we respect, wine that honestly represents its region, and access that cannot simply be purchased.

How Travelers Can Spot a Tourism Machine

The wineries we love are often difficult to find through a basic Google search because many of them are not actively trying to attract tourists. When researching winery visits, look for a few warning signs. Ask whether the website immediately directs you to select a package and purchase a ticket, whether tours leave every hour, or whether you will be placed into a group with 30, 40, or 50 strangers. Also consider whether the experience centers around a promotional video, scripted walking route, and gift shop.

None of those things mean the wine is bad. They simply tell you what kind of experience you are buying.

The places we visit may not appear among the first Google results, and some do not have public tastings at all. Finding them requires relationships. We wrote more about why wine tasting in Italy works this way because many of the best producers are not trying to be found.

Key Takeaway: Hourly departures, mandatory videos, and buy-a-ticket websites do not mean the wine is bad. They tell you exactly what kind of experience you are buying.

Why This Matters Even If You Are Not a Wine Expert

Our guests do not need to be wine collectors or know every grape variety, vintage, or appellation. Many simply love food, wine, culture, and meaningful travel.

That is enough. Practical questions, like what to wear on a winery tour, are easy to answer. The relationships are the hard part, and that is our job.

The personal connection makes wine easier to understand. When you walk through a vineyard with the person who planted it, the wine stops being an abstract product; when you sit with a family over lunch, the label has a face; and when you hear about a difficult harvest, the vintage has a story. The wine becomes part of a place and a life, and that is what people remember.

Many guests return to travel with us again. One guest told us that they normally dislike group tours, but ours was the best “non tour tour” they had experienced. That is exactly what we want.

Companies such as Perillo Tours and other large operators serve a different traveler and provide a different kind of experience. You cannot compare a red wine with a white wine and pretend they are supposed to taste the same. You also cannot directly compare our journeys with a conventional large group tour because the people, access, meals, and hospitality are different. The entire experience is built differently.

Key Takeaway: You do not need wine expertise. When you meet the person who planted the vineyard, the label has a face and the vintage has a story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you only visit wineries without tasting rooms?

No. We visit wineries with tasting rooms when they can provide a private, personal experience that goes beyond their standard public tour. The deciding factor is whether the visit feels genuinely hosted rather than routine.

Do you only visit very small wineries?

We generally prefer smaller, independent producers, but bottle production is not the only factor. The people, philosophy, wine quality, and level of access matter more than a specific number.

Are family owned wineries always better?

No. Family ownership does not guarantee great wine or great hospitality. It does, however, make a direct relationship with the people behind the winery more possible.

Are the winery tastings private?

Our private winery tours are highly personalized visits. We do not build our journeys around large scheduled public tours.

Do guests need extensive wine knowledge?

No. Our journeys are designed for people who appreciate wine, food, hospitality, and culture. Curiosity is more important than expertise.

Why not book winery visits online?

Online booking systems usually provide the winery’s standard experience. Our visits are arranged through personal relationships and direct communication with owners, winemakers, and trusted contacts.

Do you visit famous wineries?

We may visit a well known producer when the relationship, hospitality, and experience fit our standards. Fame alone is never the reason we choose a winery.

How do you find wineries that are not open to the public?

Many relationships begin through wines we serve at Aroma Thyme Bistro, trusted importers, industry tastings, and direct invitations from producers. The common thread is time spent building trust before guests arrive.

Why does meeting the owner matter?

Meeting the owner or winemaker connects the wine to a person, a place, and a story. That connection turns a tasting into a memory.

How are VIP Winery Vacations journeys different from conventional wine tours?

Our trips are small, chef led, relationship based, and built around personal access. We visit the people we know and the producers whose wines we support. The itinerary is designed around hospitality rather than tourist attractions.

Great Wine Gets Our Attention. Great People Earn a Place on Our Journeys.

It is easy to book a tasting, but it is much harder to create a meaningful encounter. That requires trust, time, relationships, repeat visits, and a willingness to build an itinerary around people instead of convenience.

We do not choose wineries because they are famous. How wineries are chosen for wine tours starts with the people behind the wines, because tourism sells tickets while hospitality creates friendships. We choose hospitality every time.

Experience a Different Kind of Wine Journey

VIP Winery Vacations creates small group wine tours built around regional food and independent wineries. These chef-led wine and gastronomy tours offer insider winery access. Our boutique wine tours are rooted in authentic wine travel and personally hosted by Marcus and Jamie.

You will not simply visit wineries; you will meet the people behind them. Explore our upcoming journeys, meet your hosts Marcus and Jamie, and discover why guests call them the best non tour tours they have experienced.