Wine Tasting in Luxembourg

Wine tasting in Luxembourg can be a bit of an enigma.

While it’s easy to sample different wines in a restaurant or at one of the 18 wine festivals held each year along the Moselle River, when it comes to tasting at a winery, there are various rules that apply that differ from place to place.

There are also fewer cues that signal to potential patrons that a winery might be available for tastings, unlike what one might experience at the more casual, drop-by style tasting rooms commonly open for weinproben and dégustation in parts of neighboring Germany or France.

Here are three ways to make your next wine tasting trip in Luxembourg a success:

Drop-in Tastings

In general, drop-in wine tasting is not as common in Luxembourg as in other places. But there are a small handful of larger establishments offer regular opening hours for drop-in tastings: Cep d’Or in Hëttermillen, Bernard-Massard in Grevenmacher, Jean Schlink-Hoffeld’s Wäistuff Deisermill in Machtum, Domaine Henri Ruppert in Schengen, Caves St. Martin in Remich and Domaines Vinsmoselle locations in Grevenmacher, Remerschen, Wellenstein and Wormeldange.

At these establishments, patrons are typically allowed to taste as many different styles of wine as they wish; some offer small samples for free, others will charge a small fee. Most offer wine that can be purchased by the glass or bottle for consumption on site or at home, and many also have set tasting menus that will allow a person to work their way through a specially selected grouping of wines or crémants.

Opening hours at each winery will vary and may be limited on evenings, weekends, and off-season, so it is best to call ahead or confirm opening times online before making the trip.

Scheduled Appointments

While some private winemakers welcome passers by to sample a few wines during regular business hours if they are not busy, most insist on a pre-arranged appointment. Staffing is typically minimal at smaller private or family wineries, so scheduling is very important since each person has several different jobs to do to keep the business running.

It is not unusual that the owner of the winery herself might be the person pouring your tastes. As a general rule of thumb, it’s best to call or e-mail at least a few days before your planned visit to let the winery know how many people to expect and to receive a confirmed scheduled appointment.

The duration of the visit is up to you and the winery, but most wine professionals will recommend against tasting everything on a winemaker’s roster.

“If you are there for the first time, normally they will propose to you a tasting of different wines,” explains Nathalie Scaillet-Reckinger of Luxembourg Vins & Crémants, adding “I would say that six or so tastes are enough because your palate gets tired and you won’t taste the differences any more.”

How many bottles should you buy? The etiquette depends on who you ask. If you are charged for the tasting, you should feel no obligation to buy; if the tasting is free, it is good form to make a purchase.

“If you taste the wine and you like it, most people will buy the wine as well. You could buy a bottle but most people buy by the case or buy six bottles. That’s normally how it works, but there is no obligation,” says Reckinger.

Keep in mind, however, that a number of private winemakers take appointments with individuals because they believe the individual will buy several cases of wine. If you are making an appointment out of curiosity, it is a good idea to indicate this to the winemaker when you make the request for an appointment so everyone is on the same page from the start.

Wine Tasting with Friends

Apart from drop-in tastings, the easiest and most straightforward way to get to know individual wineries in Luxembourg is to organize an outing with friends.

The Luxembourg Vins & Crémants promotional commission has worked with more than two dozen wineries to create an online guide to wine tasting in Luxembourg that they call “Wine Tasting with Friends,” online at www.winetasting.lu

The site is available in English and French and provides information about how to schedule a visit at each of the 28 partnering wineries.

On the site, users can find contact information for each winery and details about the number of wines and crémants made available during a scheduled tasting, as well as a per-person fee. Some wineries offer the option of enjoying a meal or food pairing with the wine tasting as well. Most of the wineries on this site require that groups be at least a minimum of 10 people, but some indicate that they will offer their paid tasting for as few as four, three or even one person.

Bookings should be made directly with the winery, and it is a good idea to mention that you found the selected producer on the Wine Tasting with Friends web site so they know the tasting package that most interests you. Because these scheduled tastings require a small fee from each visitor, there is no expectation from the winery that you will purchase their wine. But after going to such lengths to select a winery and schedule a time to visit with your friends, who would want to go home empty handed?