Niagara-on-the-Lake wine tour by chauffeur: everyone tastes, nobody drives

Why a wine tour is a chauffeur's day

A wine tour has one problem and it is the drive home. Niagara's hundred-odd wineries are spread across forty kilometres of lake plain and escarpment bench, twenty minutes apart, and a day of four tastings and a vineyard lunch is a day nobody at the table should drive. A chauffeured wine tour is an hourly booking of eight to twelve hours from your Toronto door: the car takes you down the QEW, waits in the winery lot while you taste, carries the cases, and takes you home up the QEW with everyone asleep. It is the most-booked Sprinter day on this site and the second most-booked SUV day after Niagara Falls itself.

The two Niagaras

Niagara-on-the-Lake - the lake plain around the town, forty minutes past Hamilton on the QEW and the 405 - is the grand estates: Peller, Trius, Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin, Two Sisters, Ravine, Stratus, Chateau des Charmes, Konzelmann, Reif, Pillitteri. Big tasting rooms, vineyard restaurants, the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Shaw Festival at the end of the day. The Beamsville and Twenty Valley Bench - the escarpment slope between Grimsby and St. Catharines, off the QEW at Beamsville, Vineland and Jordan - is the smaller, steeper, more serious side: Tawse, Cave Spring, Malivoire, Hidden Bench, Thirty Bench, Flat Rock, Vineland Estates, Megalomaniac, Henry of Pelham, and Jordan Village with the Inn on the Twenty for lunch. A day usually does one or the other; a long day does both. The Wine Country Ontario map is the planning tool and the chauffeur has driven every road on it.

A tour, winery by winery (book 10)

9:00 Rosedale, the Sprinter with ten friends or the SUV with four. 10:20 Two Sisters on Niagara Stone Road, the estate and the tasting bar, the car in the lot. 11:30 Ravine in St. Davids, the tasting and the walk in the vineyard. 12:45 lunch at Trius or at Ravine's restaurant, ninety minutes, the chauffeur eating separately. 2:30 Inniskillin for the icewine, which is what the visitors came for. 3:30 Niagara-on-the-Lake's Queen Street for an hour, the car on Picton Street. 4:45 the QEW. 6:15 Rosedale, the cases carried to the door. Nine and a quarter hours; ten billed. A Bench version swaps the estates for Tawse, Cave Spring and Hidden Bench with lunch in Jordan Village and is half an hour shorter on the drive.

The Shaw Festival version

The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake runs from April to October at the Festival Theatre and the Royal George, and a wine day that ends with a 2 pm matinee or an 8 pm evening performance is the best version of both: two wineries in the morning, lunch, the play, dinner at the Prince of Wales or Treadwell, and home on the QEW at 11 with the car waiting through all of it. Twelve hours. Book the Shaw tickets first and the chauffeur plans the wineries around the curtain.

Tasting fees, reservations and the cases

Most Niagara wineries charge a tasting fee, often waived with a purchase, and the larger estates take reservations for groups of six or more - a Sprinter's twelve should be booked at each stop a week ahead, and the desk will do it if you give the list. The Wine Marketing Association of Ontario's site lists fees and hours; the chauffeur knows which tasting bars take a group without a reservation on a Tuesday. Purchases ride in the boot - the SUV takes six cases with room for the passengers, the Sprinter's bay takes twenty - and the chauffeur loads them at each stop. Ontario's liquor laws mean the bottles stay sealed in the car; the tasting is at the winery.

The car

The Executive Sprinter for seven to twelve: one vehicle, one chauffeur, everyone together at every tasting bar, the bay for the cases, and from ten passengers the cheapest chauffeured seat in the province; five-hour minimum, ten hours is the day. The Luxury SUV for four to six with the cases. The Executive Sedan for a couple. The Mercedes S-Class for the client's wine day or the anniversary. The fleet page has capacities. No alcohol is consumed in any of them; the winery is for that.

Seasons in wine country

May to June: the vines leafing, the patios opening, the Shaw starting, the quietest good weather. July to August: the busiest, the estates full on Saturdays, a Tuesday or a 9 am start the answer. September to October: harvest, the best month, the escarpment in colour, the tasting rooms busiest at the weekend and the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival in St. Catharines in late September closing roads. November to March: icewine season - the Icewine Festival in January, the vines under snow, the tasting rooms empty and warm, and the Bench's fireplaces at their best. Every season is a day; the chauffeur takes the SUV in the ones with snow.

Groups: the bachelorette, the offsite, the birthday

The wine tour is the classic group day: the bachelorette in a Sprinter with a playlist and a lunch reservation; the corporate offsite with a private tasting at Two Sisters or Stratus and a working lunch; the fortieth with twelve friends; the visiting parents with the family. One organiser's phone gets every update; the Sprinter page has the organiser's checklist and the corporate accounts page puts the offsite on invoice.

What it costs

The class hourly rate for the date, times the hours, plus HST and the gratuity you set; no tolls on the QEW or the 405; winery parking is free. A Sprinter for ten hours divided by twelve is less than a return train ticket to Kingston each. The rates page explains the hourly number and the comparison page prices this exact day against the alternatives, which for a wine tour are a designated driver who does not taste or a tour bus that chooses the wineries for you.

Niagara wine country and the Falls in one day

Two wineries in the morning, lunch, the Falls at 3, Niagara-on-the-Lake at 5, home by 7:30: eleven hours, and the Niagara Falls page has the Falls half of the day. For visitors who have one day for both, it is the day to book.

Booking the wine day

Choose By the hour, the class, your address, the date, a 9 or 9:30 start and ten hours; list the wineries in the notes if you have them, or say "Niagara-on-the-Lake estates", "the Bench" or "you choose", and a chauffeur who knows the roads is assigned. For a Sprinter on a summer or harvest Saturday book two to three weeks ahead and give the desk the group size so the tasting reservations are made. Weekdays are quieter, cheaper on the peak-date layer and better in every tasting room.

The wineries, in two lists

Niagara-on-the-Lake estates: Peller Estates, Trius (Andrew Peller), Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin, Two Sisters, Ravine, Stratus, Chateau des Charmes, Konzelmann, Reif, Pillitteri, Wayne Gretzky Estates, Southbrook (organic), Hinterbrook, Between the Lines, Small Talk, Lailey, Marynissen. The Bench: Tawse, Cave Spring, Malivoire, Hidden Bench, Thirty Bench, Flat Rock, Vineland Estates, Megalomaniac, Henry of Pelham, Fielding, Angels Gate, Rosewood, Organized Crime, Redstone, Westcott, 13th Street. The desk builds a four-stop route from either list with lunch in the middle and the icewine stop last.

Lunch in wine country

Trius, Ravine, Peller and Two Sisters have vineyard restaurants that take reservations and are the natural midpoint of an estates day; on the Bench it is the Inn on the Twenty in Jordan Village, the Cave Spring patio or Redstone's restaurant. A picnic on a winery's lawn is allowed at some and not others; the chauffeur knows which and the cooler rides in the boot. Book lunch for 12:30 or 1 and the two morning wineries fall into place around it.

Wine country in a table

Corporate wine days

The client's wine day - a customer from abroad, a private tasting arranged by the desk at Two Sisters or Stratus, a vineyard lunch, the Falls if they insist - is an S-Class or SUV day on the corporate account; the team's is a Sprinter with the offsite agenda done in the vineyard restaurant's private room. Both are invoiced as one line, and both are the best-remembered day of a visit to Toronto.

The drive home, and the case

The QEW from St. Catharines at 5 pm on a Saturday is an hour and forty minutes to the Gardiner; at 7 it is an hour and fifteen. The chauffeur suggests the last winery at 4 and the road at 5, or dinner in Jordan Village and the road at 7:30, and either way the cases are in the boot, the passengers are asleep by Grimsby and the car is at the door in Rosedale with the chauffeur carrying the wine in. That last ten metres is the part a rental car never does.

From our network: VWD - attractions in Canada · VWD - luxury resorts and hotels in Canada · HotelsWorldwide.Directory - resorts in Canada · VWD - adventure travel in Canada · BookingWorldwide.net - Toronto hotels, flights and activities.