Luxury Food & Wine Holidays in France

Lyon has a fair claim to being the capital of French gastronomy, and it wears the title with a straight face rather than a fanfare. The city's bouchons, small, traditional restaurants built around slow-cooked, generous cooking, serve dishes like quenelles de brochet, tablier de sapeur, and salade lyonnaise much as they always have. Beyond the bouchons, Lyon holds one of the highest concentrations of Michelin-starred restaurants in France, a legacy that runs back to Paul Bocuse and continues through the city's current generation of chefs. Les Halles de Lyon, the city's covered market, is worth a morning in its own right: cheesemongers, charcutiers, and pâtissiers laid out under one roof. Between meals, the Renaissance streets of Vieux Lyon and the Roman ruins above the city give the trip somewhere to walk it all off.

The South of France covers enough ground to justify a trip on its own, from the lavender and market towns of Provence to the seafood-driven cooking of the Mediterranean coast. Provençal markets, Aix-en-Provence and Uzès among the best, sell tapenade, olive oil, and herbs picked that morning, and form the backbone of a cuisine built on tomatoes, garlic, and whatever the sea has offered up. Provence's vineyards work almost entirely in rosé, pale, dry, and at its best drunk within sight of the vines that made it. Bandol and the Luberon are the names to know, home to family estates where a private tasting often means little more than a cool cellar, a view over the rows, and a glass poured at exactly the right temperature.

Along the coast, fishing towns such as Cassis and Saint Tropez turn lunch into the main event, tables laid steps from the water and menus that rarely stray from the boats moored alongside. Follow the les Calanques, a protected coastal landscape, from Cassis to Marseille where you can savour the bouillabaisse and other seafood inspired fare.

Paris is the epitome of restaurant culture. Bistros and brasseries anchor the everyday, café terraces turn people-watching into an art form, and the city's fine dining scene, several three-Michelin-starred houses among them, sets a standard the rest of the world tends to follow. Its patisseries and boulangeries are worth planning around in their own right, from the precision of a well-made croissant and decadent gâteau opéra, to the theatre of a pâtisserie window in the 6th arrondissement. We’ll arrange private market tours through Marché des Enfants Rouges or Rue Mouffetard, and pastry-making classes for guests who want to take a little of the city's technique home with them.

The North trades density of restaurants for depth of drink. Champagne is the obvious draw, and a private tasting in one of the region's chalk cellars, some centuries old, remains one of the most memorable ways to spend an afternoon in France. Reims and Épernay make good bases for exploring the Maisons, both the grand houses and the smaller growers doing quietly excellent work.

Normandy, further west on the coast, works in cider and calvados rather than wine, alongside a produce list that includes Camembert, Pont-l'Évêque, and some of the country's best butter. Regional dishes lean toward the rich and the buttery: tripes à la mode de Caen, moules marinière, and slow-cooked stews built for a cooler climate.