Burgundy and Champagne, what can be a better combination for a tour with top-notch French wine and food? We start in Burgundy and finish in Champagne!

Burgundy consists of thousands of tiny vineyard plots, each said to give the wine its own character. Not so easy to understand how they can. But after a few days in Burgundy — and after tasting some fantastic wines, some of them premier cru and grand cru — you start getting a feel for it.

We will spend four nights in Beaune, a charming small town strategically located in the Côte d’Or, the region home to many famous Burgundy villages, such as Gevrey-Chambertin, Pommard, Aloxe-Corton, Meursault, and more.

We will spend some time in the vineyard to talk about the important work done there, the foundation of the wine’s final quality. Vinification in Burgundy is often simple: fermentation in open vats with manual punch‑downs, then into the oak barrels where the wine rests for a while. The magic lies in treating the grapes correctly in the vineyard and harvesting at the right moment.

We will enjoy Burgundian specialities with fantastic wines and there will be no shortage of premier cru or grand cru. We are certainly big advocates of not being blinded by the label “grand cru”, simple labels are reliable, but when you choose them carefully, as at our grand cru lunches, it becomes a great (grand!) experience.

After enjoying some of the best wines in the Côte d’Or, we will travel north. We will make a short stop in Chablis, famous for its lovely crispy chardonnay. We then continue to Reims, the capital of Champagne, for the next part of our tour.

Champagne has changed in recent years. It is no longer only a blended wine where different vintages, sub‑regions, and vineyard sites are combined into one cuvée.

More and more producers now focus on expressing the specific character of individual sites, especially the smaller family estates. One of the producers we visit, Alexandre Penet, is specialised in this. We visit one of his single vineyards, Les Fervins, which we later taste during lunch.

Champagne no longer wants to be only an aperitif or wine for celebration, but also a complex food wine, with the refreshing bubbles as a bonus. Traditionally, Champagne is blended: vintages, grape varieties, sub‑regions, and vineyard plots. This is how the Champagne houses make their BSA (brut sans année — non‑vintage brut), the so‑called “standard” champagne. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with blending (it is even necessary in a cool climate, as in Champagne). But tasting a champagne made from grapes from a single small vineyard — one that you have actually visited — is something special.

Join us for a behind‑the‑scenes deep dive on this Burgundy/Champagne tour, where we also enjoy some truly delicious lunches, always accompanied by top-quality Burgundy or different styles of Champagne.

Come on this exceptional tour to two of the world’s most respected wine regions with BKWine, one of the world’s leading wine tour operators (*).

• Burgundy – Champagne Grand Tour, 23 September – 1 October 

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(*) And the only one who has authored 13 award-winning wine books.