Bordeaux La Cité du Vin Wine Culture Museum Entrance Voucher

La Cité du Vin is not a winery and not a cellar tour. It is a museum about wine as a thing humans have made, moved, argued over and drunk for eight thousand years, housed in a building on the Garonne whose curving gold shell is meant to suggest wine swirling in a glass. This voucher covers the permanent exhibition and the view from the top.

The exhibition runs to around twenty themed areas across some three thousand square metres, and almost none of it is a case with a label on it. You steer a virtual ship through the wine trade routes of the ancient world, sit in on a projected dinner-table argument between wine figures of different centuries, and put your nose into the aroma stations to see how much you can actually name.

An audio guide comes with the ticket and knows where you are — it picks up each area as you reach it, so you are free to wander rather than follow a set order. It is available in several languages; confirm yours when you book.

The eighth floor is the Belvédère, and your ticket includes a glass there. The selection is drawn from wine regions around the world rather than Bordeaux alone and changes regularly, and grape juice is available instead if you would rather. The room is glazed on all sides: the Garonne bends away below, the old city sits downriver, and the vineyards begin somewhere past the rooftops.

Allow two to three hours for the permanent exhibition without hurrying. The visit is self-guided, so there is no meeting time to make and no group to keep up with. The building has lifts throughout and the exhibition is largely step-free.

Your glass at the Belvédère is included, but anything further at the bar, the wine shop, the tasting workshops and the restaurants is separate, and the temporary exhibition is usually a separate ticket. Wine is served to those of legal drinking age; grape juice is the alternative and is included on the same terms.