How we came to offer Prince Edward County wine tours!
Welcome to our blog!
We are Jo and David, partners in life and business and we are County Casual Tours. We offer Prince Edward County wine tours, brewery tours, cidery tours and distillery tours.
We started visiting the County in 2016, coming for weekends to enjoy the beautiful rural vistas, excellent restaurants and of course the wineries, breweries, cideries and distilleries. We fell in love with the area and dreamed about eventually retiring here. One beautiful August evening, dreaming turned to action when we decided to look for a place to buy to use as a weekend getaway with the intent to eventually retire here.
Within two months, we bought our home here in October of 2018 and began coming most weekends and downsized to an apartment in Toronto. But the more time we spent here on weekends the more we wanted to stay, so we did! We moved full time to PEC in 2019 and we haven’t looked back since.
Although during our visits to the County we had tried many of the wineries etc., on a couple of weekends when friends and family came to stay with us in 2019, we did wine tours with two different independent tour operators. It was on those tours that David realized he would really enjoy doing tours, meeting people and showing them some great places in the County.
After working in financial services for more than 30 years, David decided to leave his career and he started County Casual Tours in March 2020. The timing was less than ideal (COVID 😷), but once things opened again, he was busy and loving doing tours so much that Jo, having heard what fun it was, decided to leave the dental world and join him in the biz.
How it works…
CCT is our baby, and we strive to make our tours fit you. We offer 5-,6- and 7-hour tours. There is no schedule that we abide by, other than the length of your tour and even then, we’re open to adding time if you’re having too much fun to stop. As we tour, if something catches your eye or you decide you want to change things up then we are right there with you - happy to adapt on the fly (we don’t join you at your stops, but we will take you in and get you settled). So, while you might think tasting only wine is your thing, don’t be surprised if at some point we’re passing a brewery, cidery or distillery and suddenly you’re wanting to change things up.
We are called County Casual Tours for a reason. If you love a place and want to spend extra time then please do, if you are ready to move on then let’s go – no waiting for others! If we pass an alpaca farm and you need a fix, then we will make that happen and be happy to take photos of you and your new pals. Oh, and being “Casual” allows us to wear shorts and sandals in the summer 😎
You can easily book online to choose the duration of your tour, date and start time and how many people will be in your group. Your tour is for your group only - our tours are private, custom made just for you. After you have booked, we will reach out by email and/or text to say hello and find out what you are interested in seeing/doing/tasting. Based on your input, we put together our list/description of recommendations. If you have specific stops in mind, we incorporate those too.
On the day of the tour, we will pick you up at your accommodation and chat about the list of suggested stops for the day and then off we go, making decisions along the way about what to try next. To give you an idea, in a 5-hour tour we have had groups do as few as 3 stops and as many as 7, it is completely up to you how much time you spend along the way.
There are always blankets, water and umbrellas in our cars. We also try to have snacks on hand and have even been known to have TUMS. We then drop you back at your accommodation (or elsewhere - perhaps you have a dinner reservation), help you unload anything you have purchased through the day and are always happy to give restaurant recommendations and any other information you need about Prince Edward County. We have a SQUARE so you can pay the balance of your tour at the end of the day, and we also accept cash and e-transfers.
The County has so much to offer, and we will continue this blog to show you what we mean by highlighting some of our favourite stops and sharing what we consider when making recommendations. While it’s worth visiting Prince Edward County just for the wine, there’s so much more to see and do.
We hope you see you soon!
Jo and David