A day with a winemaker in Chianti Classico

These days are some of the most-asked-for and the most easily disappointing. Done well, they are a slow, generous afternoon. Done badly, they are a tasting flight in a barn with a label you could have bought at the airport.

The shape we suggest, when we set one up: arrive at eleven. Walk the vineyards with the winemaker for forty minutes — the parcels they care about, not the ones for the brochure. Cellar at noon. Two or three wines from the barrel; one or two finished bottles. Lunch, outdoors if the weather, in the family kitchen if not, with the people who actually run the estate. Leave by three.

The estates we send guests to are, deliberately, small. Owner-operated. No tasting room with a logo on the door. We tend to know one or two people at each, and we ask first whether they are in residence and whether they would like to do the day themselves. Sometimes the answer is no, and we propose a different week. That is the whole point.

A note on numbers: this only works for parties of two to eight. Beyond eight, it stops being a visit and becomes an event, and the conversation is the first thing to go.