Wine Stories Daytime Tour with Lunch

The sunset wine tours are the most popular on the island, but a daytime wine tour has real advantages: the light on the vineyards is clear, the villages are lively, and you finish with a proper lunch rather than a late evening. This one is a four-hour tour with a maximum of eight guests, which makes it one of the most intimate wine experiences on Santorini. It visits two wineries, includes a tour of the cellars, and pours eight wines with a lunch to match. The small group changes the feel of the tasting: instead of following a guide down a line, you sit with the winemaker or host, ask questions and compare notes. The tour is rated five stars from nearly two hundred reviews and is run by the same company as the longer sunset tour, so the approach to the story is similar, with an emphasis on the volcanic soil, the low basket-trained vines and the grape varieties that thrive on it, from the white Assyrtiko to the red Mavrotragano. Eight wines across two wineries is a more moderate pace than many tours, and the lunch means the tasting is not on an empty stomach. It suits couples and friends who want a civilised half-day, travellers who dislike crowds and anyone who wants wine to be one part of a day rather than the whole of it.

One practical advantage of the daytime format is that it leaves the rest of the day open: you can finish by mid-afternoon and spend the evening in the caldera, watch the sunset from a terrace or take a swim. If you are travelling in spring or autumn, when the days are shorter, a daytime tour also makes sure you see the vineyards in full light, which matters for photographs and for understanding how the vines are trained.