Vesuvius 4x4 and Wine Tasting (Select)

There are so many options for visiting Vesuvius from getting the train and local buses, to half day coach tours or combination trips with Pompeii or Herculaneum. However we managed to find possibly the most expensive way to do it with the 4x4 trip. It cost 83 euro per person but actually I think it was worth doing if you can afford to push the boat out a little bit. The format is a mini bus pick up from your hotel (so you group size is about 15 or 16 if the bus is full) which takes you to the lower slopes of Vesuvius where you board the 4x4 which in turn takes you most of the way up the south side of the mountain. The last stretch you need to walk up before you get to the crater, but the guide stops a few times on the way to point things out and give everyone a breather, so you’d have to be very unfit to find the walk a problem.

After about an hour of so looking round the crater at the top, the things reverse with walking back down to the 4x4 and taking that back down to the Mini bus and travelling on that on to the Vineyard for a leisurely lunch and the wine tasting, after which you are taken home.

Having written it down, it doesn’t feel like it should take a full day, but things are all done at a leisurely pace and our guide, Desireé, helped make the day entertaining with her humorous and informed commentary. Her father, Alberio, also runs the tour with a different group (we had him as a guide on the Amafli Drive another day) and both groups met up for the lunch for which the Vineyard has a special terrace just for these tours, so if any big coaches arrive you are not mixed in with them.

The Crater is very impressive and with the 4x4 route you go in via a different gate that the one all the coaches use. The 4x4 vehicles themselves are big trucks with bus seats inside rather than land rovers or the like.

The wine tasting consists of officially the three standard wines form the vineyard; white, rosé and red, but I have a hunch the extra two we had (a sparkling rosé and another red) for various “tests” during the Vesuvius visit, are probably always supplied. You just get a taste of each but don’t be shy to ask for more of the ones you like. With the first white, Desireé takes you in among the vines to tell you about the wines they produce, and after lunch a quick look around the production area with a short talk about how the wine is made. Of course you have the opportunity to buy the wines if you want but there’s no pushing at all.

So I can’t tell you if any of the other tours would have been better value, but I can say that I wouldn’t begrudge the price for what was a really enjoyable day.