Travel thoughtfully · drink responsibly · 18+
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What kind of
trip is it?

Two wine regions can be equally good and still make completely different holidays. These five split them by the thing that actually changes how a trip feels — whether you move, whether you walk, and what is in the glass at the end of it.

Each type states the rule it uses. A category that applied to nearly every region would tell you nothing, so none of these do — the largest covers nine of twenty, the smallest two.

9One base, no movingUnpack once. These are the regions where everything worth seeing sits close enough to a single town that you never repack, which is worth more on a short trip than an extra appellation.Mendoza · Mosel · Jerez · Madeira · Stellenbosch · Piedmont · Alsace · Santorini · Wachau5Walking between the wineRegions compact enough that the vineyard, the village and the next producer are a walk apart — which conveniently also solves the problem of how you get home after tasting.Burgundy · Mosel · Alsace · Santorini · Wachau4Fortified and sweetPort, sherry, Madeira and Tokaji aszú. A fundamentally different trip: the drama is in cellars, casks and ageing rather than in the vineyard, and the wines have been made this way for centuries because of how they travelled.Douro Valley · Jerez · Madeira · Tokaj4Volcanoes and altitudeWine grown somewhere geologically or vertically extreme — black lava soil, ungrafted basket vines, or vineyards at an altitude that would be alpine anywhere else.Mendoza · Etna · Santorini · Central Otago6The drive is the tripNot the same as needing a car. These are the regions where the road between two villages is one of the reasons to come — the landscape happens at windscreen speed, and the vineyards punctuate it.Mendoza · Madeira · Stellenbosch · Chianti Classico · Priorat · Central Otago2SparklingTwo regions on the same Cretaceous chalk, three hundred years apart. Traditional-method sparkling is the most cellar-driven wine tourism there is — most of what matters happens underground.Champagne · Sussex & Kent

The other ways in

By place with the region guides, by time with trip lengths, by grape, by month with the wine year, or by whether you want to drive at all — without a car.