©Château les Carmes Haut Brion / Kristina Escortell Buscandoalsol – CRTNA
Here, a cellar is toured like a museum, a winemaker serves the meal that follows the tasting, a château hosts an art exhibition or a farmers’ market, and a guest room waits with a cosy night’s sleep. The Vignobles & Découvertes label rewards destinations that have woven these experiences together, so a stay among the vines flows seamlessly, one discovery leading to the next.
Twelve regions carry this label across Nouvelle-Aquitaine today: Bordeaux, the Médoc, Graves and Sauternes, Entre-deux-Mers, Saint-Émilion Pomerol Fronsac, Blaye and Bourg, Bergerac and Duras, Charentes-Cognac-Saintonge, Île d’Oléron, Jurançon Béarn Pyrénées, Irouléguy and the Basque mountains, and Bons Crus d’Artagnan, a destination shared with Occitanie, like Armagnac and Madiran.
Newcomers, the curious and connoisseurs alike: everyone finds something to love here.
Where to start a stay in the wine capital? Probably at La Cité du Vin. It wakes up every sense, dropping you — playfully, sensorially, and just educationally enough — into a culture that’s both ancient and utterly global.
Unless you’d rather go back to school — wine school, that is! The Conseil Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bordeaux (CIVB) teaches the basics of winemaking, and runs a lovely wine bar right opposite the tourist office. Which, handily, is the perfect starting point for exploring the vineyards — by bus, by bike, even by tram, since here the vines grow right up to the city gates.
Six wine routes fan out from here: Bordeaux Métropole, Blaye and Bourg, Saint-Émilion Pomerol and Fronsac, Entre-deux-Mers, Graves and Sauternes, and the Médoc.
©Atelier Master Blender de la maison de cognac Camus / Charentes Tourisme
In Cognac, the town and the spirit are one and the same. Step through the door of a great house to learn the secrets of distillation, then head down into the ageing cellars, known as the “Paradis”, to catch a hint of the famous angels’ share evaporating slowly from the barrels. A one-hour guided tour, a workshop, or a tailor-made visit, everyone sets their own pace.
Elsewhere, in the surrounding estates and wine bars, you can taste, walk or cycle through the vines, join in the harvest or try your hand at blending. In town, cobbled streets lead down to the Musée des Savoir-Faire du Cognac on the banks of the Charente, passing through Place François 1er and the Récollets convent along the way.
Insider tip: Round off the evening at one of Cognac’s cocktail bars.
At Quai Cyrano, step off a gabarre (a traditional flat-bottomed river boat) into a 17th-century cloister, and into the story of the poet with the famous nose, who’d have made quite the sommelier himself. The Bergerac vineyard tells its story this way, part heritage, part tasting, all the way to Château de Monbazillac, where an immersive trail leads into a glass of golden sweet wine, born of the autumn mists over the Dordogne valley.
Further north, Château de Duras has watched over the Côtes de Duras since the 12th century. At the Maison des Vins, the playful “Les Clés du vignoble” trail whets the appetite before the tasting. From Bergerac to Duras, the same verve, the same pride: the South-West’s vineyards have panache too.
©Bergerac, Quai Cyrano, Cloître des Recollets / OTBSD
©Domaine d’Ognoas / B.Bloch
At Domaine d’Ognoas, a copper still dating from 1804, now a listed historic monument, still runs day and night during distillation season. Visit the ancient chai, ageing cellar, where the brandy rests for as long as forty years, then the “chai des anges” where younger vintages mature, before a complimentary tasting, as close to the source as it gets.
More broadly, some thirty producers across the Landes d’Armagnac open their cellars and stills for evening visits, with local Landes feasts and bandas (Basque-Landes brass bands) building up to the great distillation festival on Place Royale in Labastide-d’Armagnac. Here, armagnac, the oldest of France’s brandies, has as much to tell as it does to taste.
At Cave de Gan Jurançon, twenty minutes from Pau, the visit unfolds like a stroll: follow the grapes from the harvest trailer to the cellar where they rest, take your time comparing the dry and the sweet, then step out onto the path that winds through the estate, the Pyrenees lining the horizon.
Because here, the vineyard never takes its eyes off the mountains, even as it curls around the cirques. Combine a hike with wine tourism, learn the know-how straight from the people who make it, catch a short concert, share a slice of local life. The Maison des Vins de Lacommande knows all 65 winemakers along the route.
©Vignobles de Jurançon, Monein / Adrien Basse-Cathalinat / ADT64
©Irouléguy vignobles/ Adrien Basse – Cathalinat
Welcome to the Basque Country. A language, an accent, distinct faces, living traditions, songs, colours, scents, flavours… you’ll find a little of all of it in a glass of irouléguy. Ideally with a view over the steep slopes — and with the accent!
In Saint-Étienne-de-Baïgorry, the guided tour at the cooperative cellar traces the story back to the monks of Roncevaux, shows the hand-picked harvest, and follows the journey from vine to glass.
The vineyard leads on to the ramparts of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, a fortified town where pilgrims bound for Compostela have passed for centuries, before continuing on into Spain. It’s worth gaining a little height.
On Île d’Oléron, the vines grow low, trained close to the ground to withstand the salty Atlantic winds. A technique passed down since Roman times. Over 800 hectares stretch between dunes and forest, producing Charentais country wine, pineau (a fortified wine blending grape must and cognac) and cognac itself, often through local cooperatives. It’s much the same story on Île de Ré.
The whites and rosés carrying the Charentais IGP develop iodine notes found nowhere else. As for pineau, the simplest pairing is still the truest: a well-chilled glass, a few oysters, and no rush to fill the silence.
©Ile d’Oléron / Les Coflocs
Set off to explore our destinations: from the foothills of the Pyrenees to hidden villages, from surfing sessions on the coast to hikes in the wide open spaces of the Limousin. You’re bound to find a holiday that takes your fancy.
To find out more about the destination or the experiences on offer there, here are a few pages that invite you to continue your exploration, either online or in person.
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