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February 24, 2012

Guide Post: Spotting Quality Olive Oil in Tuscany

On a DuVine bike tour in Tuscany, besides the breathtaking scenery, world famous wines, and incomparable cycling, you’ll find another treasure that is certain to blow you away: olive oil. Not just any olive oil, but Tuscan olive oil. As the guides on your cycling tour in Tuscany will explain to you, that means that the olives came from Tuscany, were pressed and bottled in Tuscany, and went from grove to bottle in a matter of mere days or hours. Talk about quality. You’ll smell and taste an incredible range of flavors in each drop, whether it’s draped over a bowl of fresh pasta, drizzled over a gorgeous salad, or simply mopped up with a hunk of crusty bread. And if you join us on a bicycle tour in Tuscany at the right time of year, you just might get to make a bottle of your very own olive oil to bring home with you and transport you back to Tuscany every time you have a taste.

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February 20, 2012

Video Blog: Brittany as You’ve Never Seen it Before

Off to the far west of a France, surrounded on three sides  by the sea, lies the truly unique region of Brittany, or Bretagne as the locals call it. A region steeped in tradition and old school culture, Brittany is very much like a country unto itself. Visit Brittany on DuVine’s brand new Brittany bike tour, and you’ll quickly see what all the fuss is about. Don’t be surprised if you are immediately taken in by the magical charm of your coastal cycling tour, passing through famed places like Pont-Aven and and Carnac. Don’t be surprised if you can’t fight the urge to indulge again and again in the freshest seafood you can find, enticed by the ocean mist that follows you from day to day throughout your Brittany bicycle tour. Wash it all down with a cup of local hard cider, then rinse and repeat. Sound like the good life to you? Just ask DuVine’s Brittany experts Vincent Reboul and Gwen Lefeuvre. As you can see, they know a thing or two about Brittany, and are eager to whisk you away to another world on a Brittany cycling tour.

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February 17, 2012

Reaching New Heights on DuVine Pro Series Bike Tours

Pro Series cycling tour. Doesn’t the sound of it just make you want to throw your leg over the toptube of your bike and climb the nearest mountain? Yeah, that’s how we feel too: excited. We’re even more excited that, for 2012, DuVine has a whole slew of new Pro Series bike tours on offer. From the challenging Dolomites Pro bicycle tour to our Pro Series bike tours in Corsica and Croatia, we’ll be scaling mountains and finding our limits across the globe. And we’ll still be tackling the cols of the Alps and Pyrenees in our Pyrenees Tour de France and Alps Tour de France Pro Series bike tours.

Fast approaching is the Giro d’Italia Pro Series tour in May, which is your chance to get up close to all the action at the 2012 Giro, which promises to be a thrilling contest to the finish. Combining ascents of the towering Passo Giau, the famed Gruppo Sella, and the iconic Stelvio with chances to run alongside the malgia rosa of the race leader, this is an adventure you don’t want to miss. Who will arrive victorious in Milan? Join us and you’ll be there to find out.

Adding a new edge to our Pro Series cycling tours in 2012 is three-time national champion and the former number-one ranked Category 1 criterium racer in the United States, Skip Foley. An accomplished cyclist and all around outstanding rider, Skip will bring his immense body of experience with him when he joins some of our Pro Series tours, acting as a mentor for riders looking to improve in any and all aspects of their cycling. From training advice and the art of suffering to the simple ability to enjoy riding purely for the sake of it, he has a lot to share. If you’re curious to learn more, check out Skip’s blog and watch his interview with DuVine President and Founder Andy Levine. Better yet, join us on a DuVine Pro Series bike tour this year.

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February 10, 2012

Brand New Pro Series Bike Tours for 2012

What does a Pro Series bike tour mean? What do you get when you sign up for one of DuVine’s challenging cycling tours through the famed climbs of the Alps or Dolomites? Well, you get the chance to push yourself all the way to your limits, testing your mettle on the same roads that the pros frequent in their training and racing. If as much as 33,000 feet of climbing sounds like your idea of fun, then a Pro Series bicycle tour is just the thing for you. Let two of our Pro Series guides, Tom and Justin, tell you a little bit more about our Pro Series tours, including some of our latest options like the Croatia Pro, Corsica Pro, and Dolomites Pro Series bike tours.

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February 9, 2012

DuVine Guides Go Head to Head in Blind Wine Tasting 2012

As is becoming an annual tradition, DuVine pitted three of its popular European bike tour guides against one another in a blind wine tasting to see who would come out on top. With Tom Coppock representing our Italian bike tours, Justin Wuycheck flying the banner for French cycling tours, and Angelo Scimia in the corner of Spanish biking tours, we brought in one wine from each region to test our guides’ palates and noses.  And what a contest it was. Watch the video to see who emerged victorious and how they made their guesses. Better yet, join one of our guides on a DuVine bike tour for some remarkable wine tastings of your own!

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January 30, 2012

French Wine Tasting – Beaujolais

When most people hear the name Beaujolais, their mind automatically jumps to Beaujolais nouveau, the typical fruity, early harvest wine from the French Gamay grape. But on DuVine bike tours, you’ll never find anything typical. Case in point: this 2010 Marcel Lapierre Morgon that DuVine French cycling tour and Pro Series biking tour guide Justin Wuycheck brought in to prove that you should never judge a wine by its name. With clear notes of red fruit like strawberry and distinctive floral notes both on the palate and the nose, this is  a Beaujolais to break the mold. Light but by no means simple, it is easy-drinking and refreshing, something you could enjoy on a picnic or socializing with some friends. Or better yet, to cool off after after a bicycle tour in Burgundy with DuVine Adventures.

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January 26, 2012

A DuVine Style Spanish Picnic

On DuVine Adventures bike tours, we know how to feed our guests. Only the absolute best will suffice. But how will we know what is the best if we don’t sample it ourselves? Obviously, we can’t, and that’s why we make sure to treat ourselves every once in a while to some fine meals of our own. Quality control is tough business, but someone has to do it to ensure that you, our loyal guests, get nothing short of the full DuVine experience. And that is why, this past week, DuVine guide Angelo Scimia set up a delicious Spanish style picnic for us to enjoy. If you want a taste for yourself, just hop on a DuVine cycling tour in Spain.

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January 24, 2012

DuVine Ultimate Soiree and PMC Benefit Auction

This Friday, DuVine Adventures is hosting the ultimate party for our beloved DuVine bike tours guests and many of our valued partners. This is our way of saying thanks to all of you for adding your own personality and your own passion to the DuVine experience, without which it would not be complete. On Friday night, at the Taj Boston hotel, we’ll be singing and dancing in a new year of outstanding DuVine cycling tours.

This year, the DuVine soiree has another exciting component to it. As a major sponsor of the 2012 Pan-Mass Challenge, an event near and dear to our hearts, we’re also holding silent auctions for 25 awesome prizes, the proceeds from which will all benefit the Jimmy Fund in its battle against cancer. This is a cause we can all get behind. Check out this video with DuVine Founder Andy Levine, previewing the stellar event.

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January 2, 2012

Top 10 DuVine Adventures Blog Posts 2011

From our Top 10 Bike Rides, Top 10 Wines and Top 10 Hotels for 2011, you can see just how incredible our year has DuVine Adventures Top 10 Listsbeen. And with our Top 10 Blog Posts, as voted for by our guests and followers, we can see what your favorite moments were as well.

Thanks to our awesome team both in the field and at our home base, our blogging in 2011 has covered every aspect of DuVine Adventures. From our new Pro Series bike tours to the DuVine Apres Velo series, from our guides’ pre-tour adventures to the blow by blow accounts of the tours themselves, we’ve covered it all. And it’s all here, on the DuVine Blog, for you to relive your favorite adventures or plan your next your next journey.  So without further ado, we present to you the Top 10 Blog Posts of 2011, in order:

1 – A Brief History of Bicycle Racing in Europe – At DuVine Adventures we spend much of our Summers with our guests on bike tours in Europe, several of those bike tours correspond with famous European bicycle races such as, the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia – where we run our specialty tours; The Pyrenees Bike Tour – Tour de France and The Giro d’Italia Bike Tour -

2 – Guest Blog: Erica Stokes, repeat DuViner – In August of 2010, I (Erica Stokes) was badly in need of a scenery change.  I had to get away.  Feeling the itch to get out of town, I Googled “life changing trips” and clicked away until a I found myself on the DuVine Adventures website a short while later.

3 – The Conde’ Nast Travel Specialists Summit – Earlier this month I attended the Conde’ Nast Travel Specialist Summit in Las Vegas (mentioned also in my How to Fly Home in a Blizzard post).

4 – Puglia Bike Tour – biking in a land of conquest – Italian tour manager Tom Coppock shares the history of Puglia and why it makes it such a great place to consider as a bicycle tour in Italy.

5 – The World’s Greatest Bicycle Tour Guides – Andy has just returned from our guide training in Italy and shares his thoughts in this quick video.

6 – The Best of Provence in 2011 – DuVine has done it again! In 2011, we’ve altered and improved our Bicycle Tour Provence Itinerary to make it the best trip we’ve ever offered in the region.

7 – Lugano – Switzerland’s Italian Gem – Many of our guests spend a few days before and after their bicycle tour in the area that a tour begins or ends.

8 – DuVine Ireland – Cycling the Connemara Coast – You’ll find no blarney here, but an accurate description of what awaits you when you join a DuVine bicycle trip in Ireland.

9 – Where in the Alentejo was Andy? – Cycling deep into the heart of  Portugal in typical Andy DuVine style!

10 – The European Wine Harvest 2011 – A hundred days ago, while western Europe was basking in some unusably warm April sunshine, vines from Burgundy to Bordeaux, Touraine to Tuscany and Alsace to Alentejo began to bloom.

Check out all of these posts for some great reading and ideas for your future bicycle tours and adventure travels.

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December 6, 2011

Video Blog – Preview – DuVine Adventure’s Top 10 Lists for 2011

It’s time for the Top 10 Lists of 2011 and DuVine Adventures’ President and Founder Andy Levine has a great set of lists for the year, including: Top 10 Bike Rides, Top 10 Wines and Top 10 Hotels from across our bike tour and adventure travel activities in 2011.

Check out this preview and keep an eye out for all of the lists coming out in this blog, as well as on our DuVine Facebook page and DuVine Twitter posts.

Savor the best of 2011 and join us in 2012 as we create a new best of in adventure travel!

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