New N.S. Tour Business Pairs Wine And Vintage Cars
HALIFAX—Wine tours are a staple of Nova Scotia’s tourism season. A typical tour packs a group of strangers into a bus and carts them to a catered selection of wineries.
The tours can be a great way to get a taste of Nova Scotia’s best wine, but Brennan Fitzgerald thinks they can be more.
The rowdy strangers, the strict schedule, the crowded bus—Fitzgerald says it all takes away from the experience. The stirring beauty of the back roads of wine country, he says, is best experienced not from a bus, but nestled in the seat of a classic car.
That’s the premise behind Fitzgerald’s new business, Vintage Vino Tours. The company takes small groups on catered tours through wine country, in classic vehicles that Fitzgerald says feel built for the experience.
“Experiencing wine country is such a fun and classy activity, but we really don’t have anything in the Valley that matches that level of fun in class when it comes to touring,” Fitzgerald says.
“There was an opportunity to have an experience that was a little more elevated, a little classy, or something that was really unforgettable and really memorable.”
To create that experience, Vintage Vino takes guests through the Annapolis Valley’s wine country in one of three classic cars.
Fitzgerald’s personal favourite is a 1947 Ford Super Delux, painted a deep maroon with suicide-style doors.
“It’s the perfect colour for wine country. It looks really good as you’re touring around,” Fitzgerald says.
Other classic rides include a 1958 Chevy Delray, and a 1952 Pontiac Chieftain.
Vintage Vino Tours caters to small groups, which Fitzgerald says allows them to be much more flexible.
“The day is leisurely, it’s relaxed. We can customize and be flexible during the day so if we’re driving and you see a little farmers market that you really want to pop into, or you a little business… we can stop and we can enjoy and we can take our time and experience all these things that make the Valley so awesome.”
Fitzgerald was born and raised in Yarmouth but only recently returned to Nova Scotia, after a stint working out west.
He says opening Vintage Vino is fulfilling a dream he’s had for a while to strike out on his own as an entreperneur.
Shortly after graduating high school, Fitzgerald was elected to the council of Morinville, a rural-Alberta town. Later, he moved to B.C., where he worked for an economic development agency in Vancouver.
In 2019, he and his wife moved back to Nova Scotia and Fitzgerald got a job working at an Annapolis Valley economic development agency.
But as his career progressed, Fitzgerald usually found himself taking on a side hustle.
When he was still fairly young, he started Sea Change Clothing, a social enterprise that cleaned up ocean trash as part of its mandate. During the height of the pandemic, he and his wife also started a gift box service that highlighted local small businesses.
But those were always side projects. It wasn’t until last November, Fitzgerald says, that he became more serious about striking out on his own.
“I really said, okay, I’m ready to take the dive. [I] left a great and comfortable job, doing good work, and went off to figure out what I wanted to do. I didn’t know it would lead to Vintage Vino, but that’s where it’s led for now and I’m really excited about it,” he says.
He doesn’t recall exactly where the idea to pair wine and classic cars came from. However, once he landed on it he knew it was a winner.
Fitzgerald says he had lots of experience with tourism-related businesses but little with classic cars. He discovered one other person in Canada running a similar vintage-car wine tour, so he cold-called him and started peppering him with questions.
“And it just kind of snowballed from there,” Fitzgerald says.
Eventually, he bought the Pontiac “from an old fellow outside of Lunenberg” and found a business partner who provided the Ford and Chevy.
Everything came together fairly quickly, and Fitzgerald officially started running tours on July 8. He’s taking bookings for the rest of the summer and says Vintage Vino will run this year until the end of October.
He says he’s excited to bring a different kind of wine touring experience to the province and showcase Nova Scotia in a new way.
“Wine country looks really good from the back seat of a vintage auto,” he says.
Trevor Nichols is the Associate Editor of Huddle based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].