European Wine Travel Guides Now Free To View  Add/Read Comments

Previously, the 50 guides to France, Italy and Spain were only available to paid annual subscribers, but now all website visitors can freely view the in-depth information to plan their own wine tours.

Aimed at independent travellers who want to include a wine tour as part of their visit to Europe, the exclusive on-line guides include over 1,500 recommendations of wine producers to visit, places to stay, eat and shop, local attractions as well as detailed information on regional wines. The 50 guides cover all major French wine regions as well as Tuscany in Italy and Rioja in Spain; more regions are planned for the future.

The Wine Travel Guides website was launched by wine writer Wink Lorch, owner of Wine Travel Guides in 2007. She commissioned insider experts, many of them well-known wine and travel writers to write the guides and has always sought high quality, independent content.

Wink Lorch comments:

"I decided to free up the 1,500 pages of information to be viewed by the growing number of travellers to Europe who are interested in wine tours. In-depth information is hard to find about travelling through European wine regions and we fill that gap with our comprehensive, well researched guides."

To make it easier for travellers to plan their wine tour, printable PDF guides are available to purchase and the website also continues to offer annual gold membership allowing the most recently updated guides to be downloaded at any time.

The website will accept selective advertising in the future but Lorch adds: "All our recommendations are strictly independently chosen and will continue to be so. We accept no sponsorship from individual wineries, hotels, restaurants or other recommended attractions."

The cost of individual downloadable PDF guides is just £5 (approximately US $8.50) with discounts for multiple purchases. The annual Gold membership, which gives full access to the most recent PDF updates of all the guides on the site, costs £29 (approximately US $49) and the website intends to negotiate a range of benefits for Gold members. A sample PDF guide is available to visitors who register on the website and all of the information contained in the guides can be viewed on-line before purchase.

With the insider expert information from Wine Travel Guides, independent travellers can now plan their own tours to wine regions with confidence.