In The News

The benefits of having somebody else arrange a wine tour are many: you won't get lost, everything will be arranged (inducing difficult appointments) and you get a designated driver. The extra advantage is the style and detail that Jill Tweedie takes with the tours.

She offers wine tours from Paso Robles to Santa Ynez. One intriguing tour is what she lovingly refers to as "the shack wineries." They are small, tasting rooms are modest or less, the wine is great and the winemaker is there. Prices vary widely depending on time and number of people in the group.

Kathleen Buckley
New York Times Digital
A Division of The New York Times Co.
www.newyorktimesontheweb.com

February 11, 2000
Clip from "GOING PLACES, NEAR & FAR"
column appearing in "DISCOVERY"

It was amazing but in just three days, we had seen an incredible array of Central Coastal California attractions. It was largely due to the superb planning of Jill Tweedie, who runs Breakaway Tours & Event Planning. She and her husband originally planned to offer bike tours that are so popular in this part of California, but have branched off to do custom and special interest tours, particularly wine-country (her knowledge is phenomenal - and she knows just where to go.) Her choices proved impeccable, and her anecdotes and wonderful sense of humor had us in stitches.

She can design any type of tour - for corporate groups, spouse programs, families and reunion groups and her wonderful sense of humor makes it all that much more pleasant (just don't ask her how many antique shops there are in Morro Bay). Breakaway Tours & Event Planning 805-783-2929.

Karen Rubin, Editor
Travel Features Syndicate
5 Rose Avenue
Great Neck, NY 11021

April 1996
Magic Bus
Breakaway for an Afternoon of Fine Wine
New Times

We stared the day strangers and ended it friends. It was probably the wine, but the intimate yet comfortable tour van and gourmet lunch also helped. It was a day when different people with unique motivations and perspective came together. We connected, if just for an afternoon and we went back to our lives just a tad happier. Day trips help blow out all our accumulated anxieties. It's a way of letting to of our hustle-bustle lives for a few hours. And there are few more relaxing ways of filling those hours then sampling the nectars of the gods.

Breakaway Tours & Event Planning provides more than just a ride from winery to winery; they offer a guided, pampered tour of the Central Coast, all for far less money than the other shuttled wine tour option, a limousine. We boarded the large tour van in Pismo Beach, taking the scenic route to Edna Valley - winding through Shell Beach, Sunset Palisades and Avila Beach while the guide narrated. "People like the guided tour part," she tells me. "I even get locals who come on the tour and learn things they didn't know."

We were taking Breakaway's Edna Valley Tour including their Gourmet Picnic Lunch. "People really rave about the lunch" Tweedie said. Tweedie is a fun wine-tasting buddy, probably because she's just so good at it. She knows the staff at the wineries by name and has the wineries history and current activities committed to memory. At our first stop, Edna Valley Vineyards and Winery, Tweedie's friend, Dana, closed the tasting area after we had our fill. Then she gave us a tour. At Claiborne & Churchill's new tasting room, we all chatted with winery owner Claiborne Thompson, whom Tweedie knew.

With each passing winery, our group got more cohesive and more fun, egged on the whole time by Jill Tweedie, the Merrymaker. People have more fun coming in off Tweedie's tours than they do stepping out of limos," said Aaron Taub, who poured our wine at Corbett Canyon. She adds just the right touches at the right times to an afternoon of wine tasting.

When we were trying the heavy red wines at the Talley / Saucelito Canyon tasting room, Tweedie broke out a box of chocolates, explaining how well they complemented the reds. Some of us were skeptical, but we all tried it and all love it. At Talley, we met Chris Bee, a Canadian who was escaping the cold northern weather and adding to his 4,000 bottle wine cellar. He carried a long list of late-harvest wines he was after and helped us appreciate the outstanding winemaking region right in our backyard. "The quality of wine coming out of the Central Coast is just amazing," said Bee, who is the chief financial officer for Hallmark in Canada.

If wine isn't your bag, then don't consider this story a wasted read, because Breakaway Tours & Event Planning has other tours, including Hearst Castle, and other customized treks. "If there's a way was can accommodate people's requests, we will. Anything we can do, we will," Tweedie said."