Riesling.

Riesling rewards travel more than most because the differences are geological and visible: you can stand on the slate, or the loess, and taste the argument for it.

— What changes between them

The Mosel is the steep-slate benchmark, and the wines run from bone dry to intensely sweet within one village. Alsace sits in the Vosges rain shadow and makes it drier and broader. The Wachau grows it on terraced gneiss above the Danube with its own ripeness classifications. Central Otago is the newest and the least codified of the four.

The 4 regions

DE Germany

Mosel

Slate slopes, storybook river towns and Riesling with astonishing range.

Grows: Riesling · Pinot Noir
Best window: Jun — Sep
Trip length: 3–5 days
Nearest airport: HHN · 28 min

FR France

Alsace

A single road down the Vosges foothills, linking villages that have been making white wine for a very long time.

Grows: Riesling · Gewurztraminer · Pinot Gris
Best window: May — Jun · Sep — Oct
Trip length: 3–5 days
Nearest airport: BSL · 42 min

AT Austria

Wachau

Thirty-six kilometres of terraced Danube between two abbeys, walkable end to end.

Grows: Grüner Veltliner · Riesling
Best window: May — Jun · Sep — Oct
Trip length: 2–4 days
Nearest airport: VIE · 85 min

NZ New Zealand

Central Otago

The world's southernmost commercial wine region: continental, high, and about as far as this gets.

Grows: Pinot Noir · Chardonnay · Riesling
Best window: Feb — Apr
Trip length: 5–7 days
Nearest airport: ZQN · 46 min

Travelling for more than one

Several of these sit close enough to combine — see the fourteen-day routes, or put any two side by side with compare.