Most people who drive the coastal roads of Liguria are looking at the water. It is hard not to. The Ligurian Sea sits below almost every vineyard in the region, close enough that the salt spray reaches the vines on windy days. But look inland for a moment, and you will notice something else: terraces….
Most wine lovers can place Mosel, Rheingau, or Pfalz on a map without thinking twice. Sachsen is a different story. Tucked into the far east of Germany, wrapped around the Elbe River between Pirna and Diesbar-Seußlitz, this is the country’s smallest classified wine region and one of the northernmost vineyard areas on earth. Fewer than…
Bangkok does not announce itself the way Paris or Rome does. There is no single postcard image that sums it up. Instead, the city reveals itself in layers: steam rising off a noodle cart at six in the morning, the hush of a five-star dining room at lunch, the horns and heat of a Chinatown…
Ask most wine drinkers to name a German wine region, and you will hear Mosel, Rheingau, maybe Pfalz. Württemberg rarely comes up, which is strange given that it is the fourth largest wine region in the country, with roughly 11,500 hectares under vine stretching along the Neckar River from Heilbronn down past Stuttgart toward Tübingen….
There is something quietly defiant about Saale-Unstrut. At 51 degrees north, this is one of the most northerly traditional wine regions in the world – a place where vines cling to sun-warmed limestone terraces, where medieval monasteries gave shape to viticulture over a thousand years ago, and where a bottle of wine from a local…
There is a moment, driving north from Verona along the Adige valley, when the landscape changes quite suddenly. The broad flatlands of the Veneto give way to a narrowing gorge, the road is pressed between river and rock face, and the vineyards begin to climb the slopes in terraces that were cut out of the…
There is a saying, attributed to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, that captures this corner of Germany better than any wine guide could. Passing through the region in 1764, he reportedly remarked: “This is where Germany begins to become Italy.” Whether or not the quote is apocryphal, the sentiment holds. The Hessische Bergstraße runs along…
Southern Italy has no shortage of wine regions with serious credentials, but few feel as raw, sun-baked, and genuinely rewarding to explore as Puglia. Stretching down the heel of the Italian boot between the Adriatic and Ionian seas, this long, flat region produces more wine than almost anywhere else in the country, and for most…
There is a particular pleasure in discovering a wine region that does not shout for attention. The Nahe has never had the romantic marketing pull of the Mosel, with its postcard-steep riverbanks and tourist boats, nor the polished prestige of the Rheingau. What it has instead is something arguably more interesting: a geological complexity that…
There is a particular pleasure in arriving somewhere you did not expect to be moved by. Most wine lovers have a mental map of Germany that runs through the Mosel, the Rheingau, maybe the Pfalz, regions that have done a good job of publicising themselves. Franken rarely appears on that map, yet it is one…