Intimate wine tours are the best

Most of us have certain wine merchants whose personalities we like and whose recommendations we trust. A decade after a pleasant visit to a winery, we still buy its wines. And we love to ask questions of touring winemakers at tastings.

So keep this in mind if you're planning a trip to wine country here or abroad. Wine tours should be small enough that you leave feeling you know the winemakers and chefs you met along the way.

I was reminded of this at a wine tasting and dinner at the Inn Keeper's Kitchen at the Dilworthtown Inn a few nights ago. Most of the people in the room were local folks who had gone on small-group wine tours of Italy with Amy Wadman and Summer Wolff, of the tour company diVino, who were pouring the wines of a Piedmont producer not yet distributed in the U.S. Both are trained sommeliers. Wadman's family moved to Tuscany when she was a young teen, and she decided to stay. Wolff grew up on Long Island, and she still works in the wine retail trade with D. Sokolin -- "but my cubicle now is in Tuscany."

The two specialize in custom tours throughout Italy and are just getting started across the border in Slovenia. "If our customers want to go to the big places like Banfi, of course, we'll take them there," Wadman says, "but most of the wineries we visit don't do tours, but they'll do lunches for us. Most of these people become our friends, and we socialize with them. So, in a way, our customers become their friends, too." Even though it's time-consuming, Wadman, who started diVino seven years ago, says, "I never take anyone to some place I have not visited recently."

Generally, they don't recommend customers buy wine at the places they visit if it's available in the U.S. because of shipping costs and airport hassles. But Wolff can arrange shipment of anything not easily available through her retail connections. And she also specializes in helping wine lovers put together their cellar collections -- and not just with Italian wines.

Some other diVino hints: Travel with people who enjoy similar pursuits. Decide what you want to do when not eating great food and drinking wine -- castles, cathedrals, shopping, hanging out with a good book. Decide how busy you want your itinerary.

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