Wine Regions Beyond Bordeaux

Bordeaux is magnificent. Burgundy is transcendent. Napa needs no introduction. But for the genuinely curious wine traveller - the one who has tasted enough to know what they love and enough to want surprise - the real excitement lies elsewhere.

Georgia may be the most thrilling wine destination on earth right now. Eight thousand years of unbroken winemaking tradition, clay qvevri vessels buried in the earth, and amber wines that taste like nothing you've encountered before. The Kakheti region, with its walnut-tree-shaded courtyards and family supras that last entire afternoons, is wine travel at its most soulful.

Sicily's Mount Etna is another revelation. Vines planted on volcanic soil at altitudes that would make most winemakers nervous, producing Nerello Mascalese wines of startling elegance. The contrast between the violence of the volcano and the delicacy of the wine is one of nature's great ironies.

And then there is the Swartland in South Africa, where a new generation of winemakers is tearing up the rulebook with old-vine Chenin Blanc and field blends that express a landscape as ancient as any in the wine world.