Private journeys
The trip you've been trying to plan
Designed entirely around you — your dates, your pace, your people — and opened up by the Local Legends who already live inside each place.
Why private
You already know what a great trip looks like
The long lunch at the winery. The door round the back that nobody else goes through. The feeling of being somewhere that hasn't been packaged for visitors.
The problem is getting there. Arranging it yourself takes months of research, and even then you're never quite certain you found the right people — or that the right people will actually be there on the day.
That is the whole of what we do. You bring the curiosity. We bring the relationships, and the years of knowing which door is worth knocking on.
How we plan
The best hotels never ask you twice
"Someone paid attention, wrote it down, and acted on it before you had to ask again."
Think about the hotels that have genuinely looked after you. They knew how you take your coffee. They knew which side of the bed you sleep on, that you'd rather not be greeted by name in front of other guests, that your daughter is vegetarian this year. None of it was on a form you filled in twice.
We plan private journeys the same way. Before we propose a single winery, we want to understand who is actually travelling — how deep you want to go, what you already know, where you've already been, and what you want to be different about this trip. The itinerary is the last thing we write, not the first.
Before the itinerary
The questions we'll ask you
None of these have a wrong answer and none of them are a test. They're how we work out what to build — and, just as usefully, what to leave out.
How well do you know wine?
Everything calibrates from this — the vocabulary, the depth of the tastings, whether a vertical and a barrel sample are the highlight of your week or a long afternoon.
Have you been before?
First visit or fifth. Returning guests don't get the same cellars twice; there is always another door, and knowing which ones you've already walked through matters.
What do you want to bring home?
Knowledge. Rest. A story worth telling. Time with the person sitting next to you. Or a case of something you simply can't buy at home.
How should a day feel?
Early starts and full days, or slow mornings and one extraordinary thing. Whether the afternoons belong to us or to you.
What have you had enough of?
Often the most useful thing you tell us. Tasting rooms, three-hour lunches, long drives, anything that feels remotely like a tour — say so and it won't appear.
Who's travelling, and why now?
A couple, four friends, three generations, or your clients. An anniversary, a milestone, a reunion — or simply a gap in the calendar you'd like to use well.
We ask them properly, on a call, and we write the answers down. The point isn't the form — it's that nobody should have to explain themselves twice on a trip they're paying this much attention to.
What comes back to you
Your own brief, answered line by line
Every proposal we write opens the same way: your words on the left, and what we've actually done about them on the right. Before you read a single itinerary, you can see that you were listened to.
"A first trip to Burgundy, with a collection I've started building."
The days are built to hand you the map as well as the wines. We open at Clos de Vougeot, where the climats were first drawn, so that everything poured afterwards has somewhere to sit.
"A mix of négociants and smaller producers."
Weighted towards the small family estates whose doors are hardest to open from outside — chosen against the style your list of favourites told us you're drawn to.
"Happy to try domaines US buyers might not know."
We prioritised estates with no tasting room and no shopfront, where the visit rests entirely on our sommelier's relationship with the winemaker. Wines you can't taste without that connection.
Real lines from a recent proposal. And it arrives as a draft, not a fixed programme — a longer lunch, more time in the cellars, a village you'd rather linger in, something you'd happily trade away. Tell us, and it goes back to the team on the ground and comes home revised.
Wine, at your level
A cellar of your own, or simply a lot of questions
Wine is where a private trip most often goes wrong, and it's nearly always a calibration problem. Push a curious beginner into a two-hour technical tasting and they quietly switch off. Give a collector the introductory talk and you've wasted their afternoon.
So we ask, and then we plan accordingly.
If you're near the beginning — you like it, you're not entirely sure why, and you'd rather not be made to feel foolish — we build days where the wine is explained generously and in plain language, by people who genuinely enjoy teaching. Nothing gets dumbed down. It just gets made welcoming.
If you've done your WSET 1 or 2, run a serious cellar, buy en primeur or work in the trade, we go the other way. Older vintages pulled for you, tank and barrel samples, comparative flights across sites and vintages, and a winemaker who has been told they can talk technically because you'll enjoy it.
Depth depends on who's standing next to you, so the specialists we use are qualified to go as far as you want to. In Burgundy that's a sommelier holding the WSET Diploma and the French Wine Scholar certification — who teaches both, and who got two stages into the Master of Wine programme before moving to the Côte d'Or to work at the source. If you want the technical conversation, it's there for the asking.
And if you're a mixed group — one of you deeply into it, the others there for the food and the view — tell us. It's the most common case of all, and it's the part of the design we most enjoy.
Why we ask before we propose
Some doors only open a few times a year
The things that make these journeys worth taking don't scale. A grower pours from the barrel because our sommelier asked, not because they run visits. A chef closes the dining room for one table. A family opens their cellar a handful of times a year, and only for people they trust us to bring.
So we take on a limited number of private journeys, and a good part of the conversation is working out whether what you're after and what we can actually open are the same thing. Now and then they aren't, and we'd rather tell you than build you something ordinary.
When it does fit, it tends to fit properly — because by then we know a great deal about how you travel, and they know we wouldn't be asking without good reason.
What a private journey is
Four things that are always true
Built from scratch
We don't adapt a fixed itinerary. Yours is drawn from the ground up around how you want to travel and the moments that matter most to you.
Hosted from the inside
A sommelier, chef or specialist who lives there, whose relationships open doors you cannot book. Every tasting and dinner arranged for you alone.
Your pace
No group dynamics, no schedule to keep. Linger over lunch, take the slow morning. Meticulously planned behind the scenes so it simply flows.
Genuinely flexible
One guest or twelve. A single day or three weeks. One region or several countries. Travelling alone, as a couple, a family, close friends or clients.
You don't need a fortnight
A single day counts as a private journey
A morning in Burgundy with a sommelier and a private driver. One hosted food experience in Oaxaca. Dinner with a winemaker in Catalonia, and nothing else. If you're already travelling and want one extraordinary day inside a trip you've planned yourself, that's a proper piece of work for us — and a good way to find out how we do it.
"It was an all-inclusive experience but with real local texture that made it feel like we were guests visiting family. The hosts that came along with Amble made everything so personal — I cannot say enough about our stay. Just book them."
Peter V.
Where you can travel
Five countries, and our own people in all of them
We only go where we have someone on the inside. That keeps the list short, and it keeps the access real.
Catalonia · La Rioja · Ribera del Duero · Madrid · Mallorca · San Sebastián
Spain
Winemakers in Penedès, Priorat, Rioja and Ribera del Duero, private estate dinners, and the chefs and producers shaping one of Europe's most exciting food cultures.
Explore Spain
Burgundy · Bordeaux · Champagne · Paris
France
Private cellar tastings from the Côte d'Or to the Left Bank, time with sommeliers, growers and négociants, and access to families whose wines rarely leave the village they're made in.
Explore France
Umbria
Italy
Truffle hunts at dawn, long-table lunches in the countryside, and time with the artisans holding on to generations of craft — cheesemakers, olive millers, bakers.
Explore Italy
Oaxaca · Mexico City
Mexico
Mezcal at the palenque with the family who distil it, time with chefs and artisans, and an immersion into Mexico's culinary depth through the people who define it.
Explore MexicoTokyo · Kyoto · Osaka · and beyond
Japan
A more considered pace of travel — intimate dining rooms with eight seats, sake breweries in their working season, and encounters with craftspeople who offer a perspective on Japan well beyond the expected.
Japan is arranged on request rather than listed. Start a conversation and we'll tell you honestly what we can open.
Start a conversationWhat to expect on investment
What a private journey costs
How we quote depends on the journey. Sometimes it's a single figure for the whole thing; sometimes a day rate with accommodation shown alongside, so you can weigh the hotels yourself. We'll tell you which makes more sense for what you've asked for — and there will be a clear, agreed price in front of you before you commit to anything.
How it comes together
Four steps, and one call that matters
Start with a conversation
Send us the form below and we'll arrange a call. This is where the questions above get asked properly — not just where you want to go, but how you want it to feel.
We design your journey
An outline itinerary built around access, flow and the Local Legend who'll bring it to life — sent as a draft, not a fixed programme. A $500 planning fee, applied in full to your trip, begins detailed planning so we can give your journey the time and expertise it deserves.
We refine the details
Tell us what you'd like more of, less of, or would happily trade away. It goes back to our team on the ground and comes home revised. Once you're happy, a 50% deposit confirms the booking and we start holding everything in your name.
You arrive
Your balance falls due before you travel — 90 days ahead for a full journey, or on receipt of the final itinerary for something shorter. From there we handle all of it, so the only thing left is to turn up.
Start planning
Tell us how you want to travel
A few lines is plenty to begin with. The detail comes on the call — and we'd rather hear it from you than read it off a form. Harvest weeks and the autumn dates go first, so the earlier we talk, the more we can open.
Enquiry received
Thank you — we'll be in touch
We've got everything we need to start. Expect a personal reply within one working day, usually with a couple of questions and a suggestion for a time to talk.
Not ready to enquire?
Come and see how we do it first
Our scheduled small-group departures are the same doors, the same hosts and the same table — shared with ten or twelve others. A good way to meet us before designing something of your own.