The Greenwich Sisters Behind the Wine Trips People Actually Want to Take

Four nights, five days, in Tuscany or Piedmont, with access you are not getting by booking a hotel and making a few tasting reservations.

There are wine trips, and then there are the trips where the cellar door opens because the person leading you has known the family for twenty years.

Culinary Wine Camp falls into the second category.

Greenwich sisters Rachel and Michelle Imbrogno run the company, which takes small groups deep into Tuscany and Piedmont for five days built around vineyards, producers, local food and the people actually making what is in your glass — including wine you can order again once you are home.

Mornings are in the vineyards. Afternoons are spent tasting with winemaking families. There are cooking classes in local kitchens, long lunches, cellar visits and dinners that run past midnight.

My normal get-in-bed time is closer to 7:30 p.m. than midnight.

I will gladly make the exception for this.

There are wine trips, and then there are the trips where the cellar door opens because the person leading you has known the family for twenty years.

The access is the point

Rachel has spent more than 20 years in the wine industry, and that is the kind of tenure that turns into relationships — the reason a producer opens a cellar instead of just a tasting room, and pours a vintage that was never for sale in the first place.

Anyone can book a tasting room. The difference is knowing the people behind the bottle well enough to get into the cellar, taste older vintages and sit down with the families producing the wine.

That is what Culinary Wine Camp is built around.

The trips are not designed as a checklist of wineries. They are designed around access, relationships and context. You are not just drinking Brunello or Barolo. You are in the place it came from, with the people who made it, learning why that particular bottle tastes the way it does.

These are the people you want leading your wine trip.

And you can actually buy the wine afterward

This might be my favorite detail: every wine poured on a Culinary Wine Camp trip has to be available for sale in the United States, and twelve bottles are shipped to your door after the trip.

Meaning you are not going to fall in love with something in a cellar in Tuscany, spend the flight home thinking about it and discover that you will never see it again.

It is a small thing until you have had the exact opposite experience.

Tuscany is first

The next Culinary Wine Camp runs May 12 to 16, 2027, in Tuscany.

The focus is Val d'Orcia and Brunello country, which means vineyard mornings, Tuscan kitchens, long tables and the kind of wine you will still be talking about when you get home.

This is not the version of Tuscany where you race between towns trying to fit in three reservations before dinner.

You stay in the region. You slow down. You meet the producers. You eat where you are.

Exactly how Tuscany should be done.

Then Piedmont

The fall trip runs September 8 to 12, 2027, in Piedmont.

This one is built around Barolo, Barbaresco and white truffle season.

So yes, September in northern Italy, tasting Nebbiolo in the place it was grown and eating white truffles at dinner.

I am not sure how much more convincing anyone needs.

Group sizes are kept small, so if you are weighing dates or want details on pricing and booking, that is worth going straight to Culinary Wine Camp for.

Have you booked yet?