9 days tailor made from $5,840 pp
From $5,840 pp
At a glance
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Don't forget that all of our itineraries are totally customized and so this is just an idea of what we can build for you.
Enjoy eight days on the French Riviera and in the heart of Provence, with private wine tastings, unhurried village life, and some of the best food in the country.
This wine tour opens on the Riviera before moving inland to the Luberon, where hilltop villages, lavender fields, and serious wine country sit within easy reach of each other.
Provence is the largest rosé-producing region in France, accounting for around 40% of all French rosé, and the wines made here bear little resemblance to the sweet pink bottles found elsewhere. Provençal rosé is dry, pale, and built on Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Cinsault, with a character that runs to stone fruit, fresh herbs, and something mineral that comes directly from the garrigue-covered limestone soils.
Côtes de Provence is the dominant appellation and covers the widest ground, but it’s Bandol, on the coast between Marseille and Toulon, that produces the region’s most serious wines: rosés with structure and age-worthiness, and reds built almost entirely on Mourvèdre that need years in the bottle before they open up properly.
What makes Provence worth visiting as a wine destination, beyond the quality in the glass, is the directness of the connection between landscape and wine. The vines grow in the same stony, herb-scented terrain you walk through between tastings.
The pace is deliberately loose: a handful of planned experiences anchors each section of the trip, but there’s plenty of room to follow your own instincts. Out Of Office builds every itinerary to order, so treat this as a starting point.
In detail
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Don't forget that most of our itineraries can be totally customized. Our expert team will be able to talk you through all the options.
Days 1-2: Nice and the Riviera
You arrive into Nice and transfer to your hotel close to the Promenade des Anglais. Nice is an easy city to like. The old town, the Vieux-Nice, is a tight grid of ochre and terracotta buildings with good restaurants and bars at street level, and a gay-friendly scene that picks up considerably in the summer months. Spend your first evening here and let the city come to you.
Your second day is deliberately unstructured. The Riviera coastline runs in both directions from Nice and rewards exploration. Antibes to the west has a well-preserved old town and one of the best markets in the region. Villefranche-sur-Mer to the east is quieter and arguably more beautiful, with a deep natural harbour and a waterfront that’s well worth exploring.
Day 3: Into Provence
Your driver collects you from Nice and takes you west and north into the Luberon, a landscape of limestone hills, cherry orchards, and villages that look like they were arranged for a painting. Your base for the next five days is a luxury property in or around Gordes, one of the most striking hilltop villages in France and well-positioned for everything that follows.
Days 4-8: The Luberon and Beyond
The structure of your remaining days is a mix of planned experiences and free time. Nothing is back-to-back. The experiences on offer include:
Private wine tour, Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The appellation sits about an hour west of your base and is one of the most historically unusual in France. The wines produced here are bold and complex, made from up to 13 permitted grape varieties. A private guide takes you through one or two of the top domaines with tastings.
Luberon wine tasting. Closer to home, the Luberon and Cotes de Provence appellations produce wines that deserve more attention than they typically get. A guided visit to a local domaine covers the vineyards and cellar before a sitting tasting of their range.
Truffle hunt and lunch. A local hunter leads you through the landscape with their dog, explaining the ecology and the trade. Lunch follows, built around what you find.
Day trip to Aix-en-Provence. Aix is the most polished city in the region, with a handsome old town, a famous daily market on the Cours Mirabeau, and strong connections to Cézanne, who painted the nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire obsessively. It’s an easy hour from the Luberon and worth a full day.
Free days. At least one full day with no programme. Walk, read, swim, eat lunch somewhere local. This is the part of Provence that doesn’t make it into the itinerary but is often what people remember most.
On your final morning, your driver transfers you back to Nice for your return flight.
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