Everything You Need to Know

Our small group boutique tour is $248 per person, all-inclusive. Private charters start from $368 per person for two guests and scale down to around $139 per person for larger groups. Everything is included: tasting fees at every winery, a hosted lunch, door-to-door transport from your Adelaide accommodation, and your guide for the full day. Cellar door tasting fees in South Australia typically run $25–$35 per person per winery — ours are all covered, with nothing extra to pay on the day.

https://winetoursadelaide.com.au/terms-and-conditions/

Anyone who wants the day built around them rather than fitting into someone else’s plan.

We run private charters for groups from two people to 150 — a couple marking an anniversary, a family spread across three generations, a group of friends who want a long lunch and no timetable, corporate guests being looked after, and wedding parties showing visitors what South Australia does best.

The practical difference is control. You choose the regions, the pace and the wineries, or hand all three to us. You set the pick-up time and the finish time. If you want three cellar doors and a two-hour lunch instead of four and a quick one, that’s your call to make.

Private tours also suit anyone working around a fixed constraint — a flight, a cruise ship departure, a dinner booking, or guests who need to be somewhere by a certain hour.

If you’re two people happy to share the day with a few others, our small group tour is excellent value. If you want the day to be entirely yours, book private.

Booking is done online through our website and secured with a card at the time of booking.

We accept Visa, Mastercard, Amex or you can do a bank transfer

You pay a 25% deposit when you book, and the balance is charged automatically 14 days before your tour date. Nothing is payable on the day.

Door to door, from wherever you’re staying.

On small group tours we collect from your accommodation within about 3km of the Adelaide CBD, and from Glenelg and the Barossa. If you’re staying outside those areas, tell us when you book and we’ll arrange a central pick-up point that suits you.

On private tours there’s no zone at all — we come to your accommodation wherever it is.

Yes. Tell us when you book and we’ll pass it on to the venue before the day.

Vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, dairy free, nut allergies, coeliac — all straightforward, and the places we eat at handle them every day. The important part is the notice: restaurants in the wine regions cook to a set menu for groups, so a requirement flagged at booking is easy and one raised at the table is not.

If you’ve got a serious allergy, tell us the details rather than just the category. We’d rather have the conversation early and pick a venue that can look after you properly.

The tour runs. Cellar doors are indoors, lunch is indoors, and you’re in a vehicle in between — rain changes very little about the day.

If anything, a wet day in the wine country is underrated. Cellar doors are quieter, there’s more time with the people pouring, and in winter you’ll often find a fire going in the corner of a tasting room.

The only things weather affects are the outdoor bits — a lawn, a deck, a walk through the vines — and we’ll shuffle those or swap in somewhere with a better indoor space.

We don’t cancel for rain. The rare exceptions are genuinely unsafe conditions like flooding or a total fire ban, and we’d talk to you well before the day.

No. If a Catastrophic fire danger rating or a total fire ban is declared for the region your tour is heading to, we don’t run.

The Barossa, McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills are all bushfire country, and the roads between cellar doors are rural and narrow. On those days the risk isn’t worth a day of wine tasting, and the fire services would rather not have tourist traffic in the hills either.

 Your booking — will be fully refund, or reschedule

We watch the CFS forecasts in the days beforehand and will contact you as early as we can rather than leaving you wondering on the morning.

About an hour at each, but that’s a guide rather than a schedule.

If you’re deep in conversation with the winemaker and don’t want to leave, we don’t stand at the door tapping a watch. If a place isn’t for you, we move on early and give the time to somewhere you’re enjoying more. Your day, your pace.

The exception is where a venue has booked you a seated tasting at a set time — those we keep to, because the next group is coming in behind you.

An hour is also roughly what a tasting needs. Twenty minutes is a bus tour; three hours and you’ve seen one winery.

It depends which tour you’re on.

On our small group Barossa tour, we can’t wait. There are other guests in the vehicle whose day we’d be shortening, and the winemakers we visit have set us a time — they’re fitting us around their work, not the other way round. Miss those appointments and the day loses the thing you booked it for. We’ll call you, but we do have to leave.

On a private tour it’s your day and your call. If you’re running twenty minutes behind, we’ll adjust and make it up later.

So: if you’re on the small group tour, be out the front at the time we’ve given you. If something’s gone wrong, ring us straight away rather than waiting — a few minutes’ warning gives us options we won’t have otherwise.

On a private tour with eight or fewer guests, yes. Tell your guide what you’d like and we’ll work it out — swap a stop, stay longer somewhere, change where you eat.

Above eight, no. Once you’re a larger group the wineries have set aside space specifically for you, sometimes closing part of the cellar door to other visitors. No winery can absorb a group of ten or twenty walking in unannounced on a Saturday, and turning up unexpected would burn the relationships that get you in the door in the first place.

On small group tours the itinerary is fixed, because the winemaker appointments are booked around it.

So: small private groups, we’re flexible. Larger groups, tell us beforehand and we’ll change anything you like — just not on the morning.

You won’t need them. The wineries are only about fifteen minutes apart and every cellar door has facilities, so there’s rarely a reason to stop in between.

The longer stretch is the run out from Adelaide at the start of the day. There are plenty of good stopping points along the way, so if anyone needs one, just say — we’ll pull in.

No need to be shy about asking. It’s a full day out and we’d much rather stop than have someone sitting there uncomfortable.

Absolutely. Just say the word.

There’s a lot worth stopping for — kangaroos in the paddocks, koalas in the gums, lookouts over the valleys, and old vines that photograph better than anything on a postcard. If you spot something out the window, tell your guide and we’ll pull over where it’s safe.

For a lot of international visitors the kangaroos are the highlight of the day, wine notwithstanding. We’re not going to rush you past them

Yes, and most people do.

Every cellar door we visit sells direct, and buying at the source is often the only way to get the wines you’ll taste — plenty of what you’ll try never reaches a bottle shop, and some of it never leaves the property at all.

If you’d rather not carry it, the wineries will pack and ship for you, anywhere in Australia or overseas. Freight is often discounted or free on a dozen, so it’s worth deciding before you start tasting rather than working out what fits in a suitcase at the last stop. Your guide will sort it out with the cellar door.

There’s no obligation to buy anything, anywhere. Your tasting fees are already paid.

Yes — seven days a week, every season.

Each part of the year gives you a different day. Vintage, February to April, is the most alive the regions get: the fruit’s coming in, the crushers are running, and you can sometimes watch a harvest happening around you. Winter, June to August, is the quiet season and badly underrated — fewer people, fires lit in the cellar doors, and winemakers with the time to sit and talk properly. Spring and autumn give you the best weather and the best-looking countryside, particularly the Adelaide Hills in April and May when the colour turns.

There’s no bad time to come. There’s just a different day depending on when you do.

It depends on one thing: whether somebody is willing to not drink.

South Australia’s limit is 0.05, and tasting at four cellar doors will put you well past it. Drive yourself and one person in the car spends the day watching everyone else taste. That’s the whole trade-off, and it’s why most people who’ve done it once don’t do it twice.

Beyond that, you’d be navigating unfamiliar back roads, working out which cellar doors need bookings, and finding out at lunchtime that the good places were full a month ago.

Self-driving works if you’re visiting two cellar doors near each other and someone genuinely doesn’t mind abstaining. For a full day across a region, a tour is the only version where everybody actually gets the day.

It depends on the tour type.

On our small group boutique tours, we select all the wineries — and that’s intentional. Our reputation is built on the quality of the experiences we take people to, and we protect that standard carefully. Every stop is chosen because we genuinely consider it one of the best available in the region, not because of any partnership or commercial arrangement. We’re not affiliated with any particular winery. You get our honest, independent judgement — and the results speak for themselves.

On a private charter, the day is yours to shape. You can nominate specific wineries, leave it entirely in our hands, or anything in between. Before your tour we’ll talk through your wine preferences and what you’re hoping for, and we’ll build the day around that. The same quality standard applies regardless.

The Barossa Valley — an hour north. Big old-vine Shiraz, some of the oldest producing vines on earth, and the German settler history you can still see in the towns. This is where our small group tours go, into working sheds most visitors never reach.

McLaren Vale — 45 minutes south. Shiraz and Grenache off old vines, plus Fiano, Vermentino and Nero d’Avola suiting the warm coastal climate. Flat, compact, and close enough to finish the day at the beach.

The Adelaide Hills — half an hour east. Cool-climate Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and sparkling, in the prettiest country of the three.

Adelaide is one of only nine Great Wine Capitals in the world, and this is why: three distinct regions, three different climates, all inside an hour of the city. Very few places can say that.

Yes — and not an automated one with a code on it.

Email or call and tell us what the occasion is. A milestone birthday, an anniversary, a thank you, a wedding gift. We’ll make up a personal gift card for that person and that occasion, and you tell us the amount or the tour you’d like to give them.

It’s a good present. Most people already have enough things, and a day in the wine country with the people who make it tends to get remembered longer than whatever was in the box.

Call 0487 487 111 or email info@winetoursadelaide.com.au and we’ll sort it out.

Yes. Our small group tour is $248 per person booked through this site. The same tour costs more on the booking platforms — they add their own fee on top of our price.

Booking direct also means dealing with us rather than a booking system. A different pick-up time, a dietary requirement, a date change, a question the night before — that’s one phone call. Through a platform it’s a support ticket and a wait.

And the commission those platforms take, up to 30%, comes out of the day rather than out of thin air. Book direct and all of it goes into the tour.

0487 487 111 or book on this site.