PB Valley Khao Yai Winery

While we were in PB Valley I remembered how we used to choose wine in supermarkets:

“Check this label: these rolling hills look nice. And there’s a vineyard with a lovely house.”

-“What’s the grape?” -“Mmm, not sure, it says Chateau de Coloane.”

-“Look, there’s a Pinot Noir with a bird.”

-“But I like the one with the hills more.”

I guess for many years we’ve seen so many pretty wine bottle labels, that we unconsciously dreamt of visiting a real vineyard. And you know what? Dreams do come true! Last weekend was eye-opening – it turns out that good wine and coffee actually EXIST in Thailand. Not imports – local produce!

Why we went:

Let me go back a few years. We love wine. We always did, but we learnt to appreciate it when we lived back in Leeds, UK. There was a small wine shop next door and every Friday they would open a few bottles of wine for tasting.

Naturally, when everyone’s off to the pub to celebrate the end of the week, we’d stop by this little wine shop. It wasn’t just the free tastings that kept us coming back though! We love meeting people who genuinely enjoy what they do and the staff at that shop were exactly like that. They were so passionate and informative, that we felt like two kids in a candy store, not knowing which bottle (with pretty labels) to pick to take home!

Listening to them talking about grapes and how they’re grown, we’d always imagine us walking along vineyards surrounded by hills. Never expected that dream to come true… in Thailand! We spotted PB Valley on our way home from the Vespa festival (LINK) and asked around, and it didn’t take long for us to come back.

The tour:

The wine tour was really interesting – at PB Valley they grow not just grapes, but all kinds of things: apricots, melons.. even their own coffee! We were shown the lengthy process of making wine, which we though was much easier. Luckily there wasn’t a test afterwards – it would have been a sad day for us as teachers.

We drove around the vineyards, walked through the actual winery, the storage, the bottling, etc. (you see how I worded it there? I made it look like i remember much) and the last part was the tasting. At this point we were convinced that a proper wine CAN be made in Thailand, and it’s good. Long story short, it’s as good a wine as anywhere else in the world.

The best part though was just looking at the pretty vines whilst sitting in a golf cart-type of carriage pulled by a little tractor. They also have a short yet interesting history, so I’d recommend visiting their website HERE.

The ambience:

The view is really spectacular and the photos say it all. You know one of those long summer weekends when all the housework is done and you just chill out on the terrace with a glass of wine? Now add the view of vineyards and mountains in the distance and you get the picture.

It was simply perfect, we just wanted to chill and do nothing. However, most of our time was spent taking photos. #photographerslife. You may wonder, how many shots does it take to do a professional selfie? The answer: about one glass of wine.

If you want to get a taste of what it felt like, just youtube this video “Bird Song & Nature Sounds – Skylark Birds Singing & Poppy Fields Relaxation”.

The accommodation:

“It’s just a simple room” they said.

There’s only one house, which basically means YOU GET THE WHOLE VINEYARD FOR YOURSELF.

It’s a mix between a tipi (just had to google that) and a normal house. It’s beautiful. It had air-conditioning, but we preferred to just sit out on the terrace and listen to the wind and birds singing.

Personally, if you like the pretty pictures of Toscana on wine bottles, it’s almost just like that!

The food:

PB Valley is all about local produce. Everything you get at the restaurant is sourced locally.

They had a nice selection of dishes that they offered to alter for us to make them vegetarian: green curry with tofu, mushroom tom yam, tofu and veggie stir fry, sunflower sprouts in sauce and salad with japanese dressing.

The desserts were very creative and up-to-date with fast-changing Bangkok trends. The panacotta with fresh mango was light and lovely, the cheesecake was creamy with a nice chocolate base, and the charcoal ice cream was… weird. It was proper thick ice cream though, I just don’t like to eat charcoal – as crazy as it sounds.

We stuffed ourselves until we nearly exploded. Our fave was the stir fry as it was perfectly crispy. But the winner was yet to come. We ordered a pizza for dinner and they let us take it to our “nest”. We opened up a bottle of wine from the minibar and it was just… *insert pretty wine label*

In general, their restaurant is apparently really good for all kinds of meats, which we can’t really comment on! But there were people coming in just for a meal there and there’s nothing around, which means it must be good.

The cons:

There’s only one thing really. If it wasn’t for our little Vespa, we wouldn’t have been able to get there! The management said they are trying to start a shuttle bus service from Bangkok, but as of now, you either need your own transport, or arrange a group tour to get there.

Other than that, we had the perfect weekend getaway.