Is a Private Tour Guide Worth it?
As is true for all great answers to questions … it depends. Worth is a matter of perspective.
I would assume the value of a private guide varies depending on your familiarity with your destination as well as your understanding of the local language. For example, I could easily survive Germany because I speak the language fairly well. I am also capable of Aussie and NZ languages (coffee black please and don’t ask for a napkin). But driving on the left side of the road (drive left, look right becomes a mantra) for a month almost got me killed after returning to America and I left a large mall driveway using the left lane on my motorcycle.
On the other hand, in France I am very capable of “Deux croissant s’il vous plait”. But that is my limit except for wine regions and wine terminology. Luckily, I can decipher most French menus. And a jambon et beurre sandwich (sandweech) is much tastier than you might think, but you’ll never know unless you can correctly pronounce it.
So, hiring a guide is more a function of my level of familiarity and comfort with the destination. And with all the wine tasting we didn’t have to worry about who was driving in an unfamiliar foreign country.
At first glance, you might think a private tour guide is too expensive for someone who will just drive you around for wine tasting. Let me tell you, the guide we hired for 2 days while we were in Bordeaux for one week before our river cruise on AmaWaterways was worth every euro. I found Frédéric Borliachon after weeks of research and reading comments left by others. Frédéric’s family used to own a Chateau in Bordeaux (inheritance taxes make it hard to keep them in the family), so Frédéric is both incredibly well connected and knowledgeable about wine. A chateau need not be a fancy castle; just grow, produce, and bottle wine on the same property.
I wrote a review about his personalized service on Trip Advisor, so I will cover a different aspect here.
First of all, after we paid for our apartment in Bordeaux we found we had booked our first week in Bordeaux during Primeur Tasting week in April when chateaux are closed to the public so tours would have otherwise been impossible. Primeur Tasting is an event for wine futures buyers who are tasting wine made about 6 months earlier.
But, since Frédéric is so well connected, he was able to get us into some very unique tasting events for these buyers. In fact, we visited 2 Chateaux that had about 15 Chateaux pouring at each and were able to talk with several winemakers including a man named Thierry who had a sense of humor in referring to our personal winemaking as international distribution after finding out we work with only 2-3 tons of grapes each year.
Another example of Frédéric’s connections was when we entered one Chateau and the winemaker, who was very busy, just handed Frédéric the winery keys and told him to show us around.
At another Chateau, we were shown around the production area after the winemaker found out we made wine in California. We walked the catwalk around the tops of huge oak casks and even saw an experimental Taransaud cask that used embedded sensors to transmit wine data to the winemaker’s computer. It was the most advanced use of technology we saw in France.
Every Chateau (including a rare tasting at Mouton Rothshild) was entirely different as were the many shortcuts we took on side roads that only a local would know. Remember, this was 2 days during Primeur Tasting week.
For our first lunch, Frédéric was willing to drop us off at a nearby restaurant in St. Emilion and pick us up afterward. But we invited him to join us at Lard et Bouchon restaurant where we met the manager who knew Frédéric and found a unique bottle just for us out of the restaurant’s wine cellar. Frédéric turned out to be an excellent lunch guest who we invited to join us during our 2nd lunch at the Chateau Beau Jardin restaurant in Medoc. Again, Frédéric’s connections in Bordeaux resulted in us being provided great service by the owners he has known for many years.
In St. Emilion, Frédéric made a side trip to the original very famous Blanchet Bakery that makes French Macarons (not to be confused with Parisian macarons) from a 17th century recipe. We also snuck like school kids into the limestone caves in St. Emilion that Frédéric used to explore when much younger. And the next day as we returned from Medoc, he also stopped at the Mlle. Margaux chocolate factory even thought the day was running late.
In summary, Frédéric got us into many places we would not have otherwise have had access. He picked us up at our apartment in Bordeaux and had a plan that covered a lot on each full day before he dropped us off at our pickup point. We had shared ahead of time what level of information we wanted to discover, so we spent one day on the right bank and the other on the left bank talking with many winemakers. It was very personalized and did not feel structured like a “cookie cutter” experience.
