How to visit Bordeaux's 80m euro wine theme park - Cité du Vin

Heading to Bordeaux this summer? Be among the first to visit the new Bordeaux wine theme park - the Cité du Vin - which cost 80 million euros to build.

Bordeaux’s 80-million-euro wine theme park is likely to be high on many wine tourists’ agenda following its opening by French president Francois Hollande this week (31 May).

Whether you’ll be in Bordeaux during the Euro 2016 football tournament or just passing through, here’s how you can get to Cité du Vin and what the permanent tour involves.

READ ALSO: Exclusive look inside Bordeaux Cité du Vin with Jane Anson

Opening times:

9:30am to 7:30pm daily

Ticket cost:

Permanent tour: €20 (£15 / $22 / Chinese yuan: 147), including a 50ml glass of wine with a 360-degrees view of Bordeaux

Special exhibitions, tasting workshops and events will cost more. See the Cité du Vin website for details.

Tour translation available for free in eight languages.

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How to get there:

Tram: Bordeaux’s Cité du Vin is roughly a 15-minute tram ride from Quinconces in the city centre. Just head north on line B to the handily named Cité du Vin stop.

Cycle: If you’re feeling sprightly, you can also cycle there along the river from the city centre with Bordeaux’s city bike hire scheme, VCub. Peddle quickly and it might not even cost you anything…

Car: It’s around 30-40 minutes from Bordeaux Mérignac airport

The Bordeaux Cité du Vin tour

(Data source: Cité du Vin. Descriptions below edited by Decanter.com)

1 World tour of the vineyards
2 Wine Planets
3 Table of terroirs, including testimony from 50 winemakers around the world
4 History of vineyard growing via touch-screen tablets
5 How wine is made: step inside stainless steel, oak and glass structures
6 Wine portraits: giant bottles
7 Wine by the waterside: How wine has travelled for centuries
8 All aboard a 50-seater boat to follow the journey of wine merchants
9 Gallery of civilisations: Wine and ancient history
10 Wall of trends: Image of wine in the 21st Century
11 The ‘5 senses buffet’: How to taste wine
12 The Banquet of illustrious figures: A very special dinner party, with illustrious
figures including Voltaire, Churchill and Napoleon
13 Bacchus and Vénus: Wine and the arts
14 Divine wine: A space for contemplation and reflection
15 Wine and excess: In the media throughout history
16 The art of living: How wine has been served with food down the ages
17 Private meeting with experts: Answering your questions
18 Wine and Bordeaux: Touch screens on how wine shaped Bordeaux
19 How wine enabled Bordeaux to become an international port city