There are quite a few wine tour operators to choose from so you need to look around and see who you think is best for you. Let us try to convince you to choose BKWine.
It doesn’t matter if you are a total wine novice, or if you have worked in the wine sector. Either way, we will give you a memorable wine and food experience, in a way that no other tour operator can do.
Are you looking for a bucket-list wine tour, “been there, done that”? Then you probably don’t need us. In fact, you can easily organise that yourself, with a bit of googling.
If, on the contrary, you are looking for an exceptional experience that will give you a life-time memory of a wine region and of the people you meet, well, then you should read on. And we look forward to meeting you.
Experience
BKWine was founded by us, Britt and Per Karlsson. We have organised many hundreds of wine tours, doing our very first tour in 1986, and we run around 30 wine tours every year. We both personally visit some 200 vineyards and wineries every year, which means a lot of wines, a great deal of travelling, plenty of winery visits and countless meetings with winemakers… all of which adds up to unparalleled experience within the wine tourism sector.
We have been working professionally in wine tourism since the early 1990s and started running wine tours long before this became a popular travel option. Compared to us, many other wine tour operators don’t really spend much time in wine regions or with wine growers.
Who would you trust more? Someone who is hands-on and often in the field, or someone who manages their tours remotely from an office and subcontracts all the important work on the ground to more or less skilled contractors?
Wine knowledge
We know a lot about wine. We are internationally recognised wine writers and wine journalists. We have written no less than ten wine books which have won awards from, amongst others, Gourmand International and the prestigious OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine). We publish a widely-read wine newsletter called the BKWine Brief, and online wine magazine called BKWine Magazine and we write about wine for Forbes.com.
Wine tourism knowledge
We have unparalleled experience and knowledge of wine travel and wine tourism. We have been invited as speakers at many wine tourism and culinary touring conferences, and we’re proud to say that even the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO, United Nations World Tourism Organisation) and the World Bank have asked us for advice on wine tourism.
Insight and contacts
We meet several hundred winemakers every year and we have excellent connections with many wine producers around the world. In fact, many growers know us by reputation long before we contact them to see if we can arrange for a visit to their winery.
Passion
This is perhaps the most important thing about us, Britt and Per, and our BKWine team. We do this job because we are passionate about wine, gastronomy and travel, and about making new discoveries and meeting new people.
We really do want you to love the wine regions that you visit with us. Our aim is to share our experience and what we consider to be one of life’s more pleasurable activities. We absolutely want you to be delighted by the unique wines, food and people of whichever region you’ve chosen to travel to, because we’ve chosen them especially for our clients, for you.
Trust us: we will do all we can to make sure that you come home with magical memories.
Independence
Our tours are not designed to encourage you buy wine from a specific producer, in contrast to some that are organised by importers or wine retailers, or by wine tour companies affiliated with wine merchants. (That is unfortunately not always easy to see for an outsider.) This means that we are totally independent and can simply choose the winery visits that are best for our clients.
For you, this means that the winery visits are designed to give you an exceptional experience and not made to try and make you buy certain wines.
The best visits
We choose our tour destinations and winery visits with great care. It is not because a winery happens to have a famous name or makes an award-winning wine that it will be a great place to visit. To be honest, the most famous places are often less exciting and offer less interesting visits, because they tend to become very popular with tourists.
Instead, we choose the wineries we visit because they will give our guests a unique and special experience when you visit them with BKWine. Do you want to be one of many thousands of visitors, or would you prefer to feel special and be greeted with a personal welcome?
Wine is very much about people
Wine is really about people. It’s not just about an alcoholic beverage or an international luxury product, or a name on a label. Wine is about the people you meet in the vineyards and in the wineries. The people behind the labels. And about the people you share these experiences with, your fellow travellers.
It is also about culture, history, atmosphere and of course, gastronomy. The wine tasting we do during a visit is important, but it is also essential that we meet the right people and have a more personal experience. Few other wine tour operators get there.
It is relatively easy to create a “bucket list” wine tour with famous names, best-selling wines and showy labels, but it’s not so easy to meet the right people. Our contacts and connections are what makes the all-important difference, and that’s how we can ensure you will meet the right people when you sign up for a tour with BKWine.
BKWine: Britt, Per and the team
A wine and food tour with BKWine is always led by a knowledgeable and experienced BKWine guide and tour manager. These are people who know the ins and outs of wine, the local cuisine and culture, and who speak the local language.
Many wine tour operators are not much more than portals. Based in an office far from the wine regions, these are tour operators who have teamed up with various local tourism guides. They rarely travel to wine country themselves, know not much about wine, and do little in the way of tour planning: they’re just resellers.
This is not how BKWine works. We’re not a reseller or a portal. Most of our tours are guided by us, Britt or Per, or our team. We spend a large part of the year travelling in the wine regions, taking clients on winery visits, meeting winemakers, or working on wine writing projects.
We can guarantee the quality of our tours because we have organised everything ourselves and we know how to design the best wine tours.
You can’t create great wine tours if you’re sitting in an office far away.
Educational… and entertaining
An important part of wine touring is learning more about wine, to experience first-hand what it is all about. But it is equally important that your wine tour is enjoyable, and a big part of that is the other people you meet on the trip. This is an opportunity to make new friends and share some excellent meals together. Our trips are a blend of “education” and entertainment, and the end result is, we hope, very good fun for all involved.
The highest accolade: clients who come back for more
Many of our travellers come back again. Indeed, we have clients who have travelled more than ten times with BKWine tours, and it is true that on a typical tour, around a third of the participants will have already travelled with us at least once. People who have travelled with us know why BKWine is different. And that’s why they come back.
We’ve heard many times clients say “we have never wanted to travel on a group tour before, but we really wanted to go to [wine region]”. And then they say “but this was such an extraordinary and unforgettable experience so we’ll come back on another tour with you”.
Have we convinced you?
Perhaps we have not persuaded you yet. That’s OK. A wine tour is a bit like wine, it is a matter of personal taste and opinion. But we would encourage you to read our customer testimonials and find out what other people have said about us.
You may be looking for a short wine weekend holiday or a longer wine vacation. Whatever your plans, you can be confident that you will get a top-quality tour, and an experience of a lifetime with BKWine. Or at least an experience that will last you until the next time you come on a wine tour with BKWine.
We should also mention that the world’s biggest travel magazine, Travel+Leisure Magazine, included BKWine Tours on their list of “World’s Top Wine Tours”.
