What the very best wine travel destinations are depends on what you want to do. Every wine lover wants to experience different things. Some go to the wine country to seek out those wines that cannot be found elsewhere, others go there to see those world famous chateaux. Or for the landscape, the food, the people… Or for all of that.
It is always fun to see what others think are the best wine tour destinations. So when The Wine Enthusiast publishes its list of the best wine tour wine region destinations for 2014 it is worth taking a look. One might not agree. Or one might simply be inspired.
Here is their choice of the very best wine travel destinations:
- The Aegean Islands, Greece
- Valle de Guadalupe/Baja California, Mexico
- Texas Hill Country, USA
- Mendoza, Argentina
- Sonoma, USA
- Baden, Germany
- Barossa Valley, Australia
- Walla Walla, USA
- Languedoc, France
- Umbria, Italy
Well, as one would expect from the Wine Enthusiast this is a very New World, not to say US centric selection. But I would certainly love to go to all of those wine regions.
We at BKWine currently do not have any North American destinations on our program. Perhaps we should have?
If I take a look at the other destinations though, we are pretty much covering it all!
We have been several times to the Greek wine regions, although we have not yet organised a tour there. It is certainly a very exciting wine country to visit with lots of things and wine-entrepreneurship going on. Would you be interested to join us?
Mendoza is actually our next destination on our own wine travel schedule. We will be going to Mendoza in Argentina (as well as to Chile) with a group of wine lovers on our tour in February. A very exciting wine regions to visit.
Germany is the most northern wine region we currently have wine tours to. The most famous regions are of course the Mosel and the Rheingau, but Baden is an excellent choice to. And if you want to extend the trip a little bit it is only a short hop across the border to France and Alsace.
The Languedoc is in a way one of our favourite wine regions (but aren’t they all!). A few years back we wrote a book about the wines and the vineyards of the Languedoc so you could hardly find a better guide for your exploration there. It is one of the lesser-known wine regions in France but Languedoc is definitely worth visiting on a wine tour!
And then Umbria in Italy. In case you are not too familiar with it, Umbria is just a short road trip east of the Tuscan wine regions, about an hour’s drive from Florence. It is not so famous as Tuscany but it is just as beautiful. With the added benefit that you have quite a lot less foreign tourists there than in Tuscany so the wineries usually greet you with much more open arms than in the rather busy wineries around Florence. Again, a very good choice where we have done several wine tours!
Read the full Wine Enthusiast article here.
What do you think are the top wine travel destinations for 2014?
Where would you want us to take you?
