With millions of people visiting wine regions every year to swirl, slurp and spit their way through a grape-fuelled holiday, enotourism is on the rise around the world.
From the wineries near the towering Andes to the famous vineyards of France, tourists are drawn to sample the world’s best and most renowned wines.
These destinations often combine temperate climates with magnificent scenery and charming villages with famous cities, so there are plenty of opportunities for exploration and discovery in between wine tastings, cellar tours and hillside meals.
Whether you prefer the port wines and the drastic slopes of the Douro Valley, the chateaux and reds of Bordeaux or the white wines and imposing mountains of New Zealand, the world’s foremost wine regions offer something to suit every taste. Read on for a selection of the best.
Bordeaux, France
Bordeaux is home to around 7,000 different wineries
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The Bordeaux wine region is named after the main city, though it covers parts of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine administrative region around the Gironde Estuary and the Garonne and Dordogne rivers. Divided into two main areas – the Left Bank and Right Bank – it’s said to be home to around 7,000 different wineries, many of which are famed for their production of red wines using merlot or cabernet sauvignon grapes.
Bordeaux is known as much for the elegant chateaux that produce the wines as it is for their tastes. Within the region, Saint-Emilion and Medoc are perhaps the most well-known areas, home to around 1,300 wineries between them.
Producers here range from the smaller, more humble family-owned variety to castle-like estates complete with on-site Michelin-starred restaurants. Examples of the former include Chateau Venus or Sigalas Rabaud, where your tour guide may be the owner and where a free, 30-minute tasting of four wines can be booked in advance. Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey falls into the latter camp, though there are (quite literally) thousands of options in between, offering anything from simple tours of vineyards and cellars to flights over the local area and tastings paired with tapas menus.
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Napa Valley, California, USA
Napa Valley combines near-perfect weather and majestic scenery
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Located around 60 miles from San Francisco, the Napa Valley is a comparatively…
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