Eight regions that do not taste like each other
Wine Europe
The interesting wine map of Europe is not the famous one. It includes clay vessels buried in Georgian courtyards, volcanic vines woven into baskets against Aegean wind, and slate slopes on the Rhine at sixty degrees. Every one of these places will let you taste in the cellar where it was made.
8 places across 7 countries · not an itinerary
Bordeaux
The reference point, and Saint-Émilion's small growers behind it.
Beaune
Burgundy's slope, where the parcels have names and the walls are older than the borders.
Pinhão & the Douro valley
The Douro: schist terraces too steep for machines, and treading still done by foot.
Tokaj
The first classified region in the world, from 1737, in cellars furred with black mould.
Sighnaghi & Kakheti
Georgia: eight thousand years of fermenting in buried qvevri, skins and all.
Mikulov
Moravia at harvest, when half-fermented burčák appears for three weeks and then vanishes.
Santorini
Assyrtiko from vines trained into wreaths on the ground against the wind.
Bacharach & the Rhine Gorge
The Rhine gorge, where the good slopes are steep enough to need a winch.
Not an itinerary
A theme is a way of seeing, not a route: these places are not in travelling order and most people take three or four of them, not all. For an order that respects distance, put the ones you want into the Planner.
Countries it crosses
France, Portugal, Hungary, Georgia, Czechia, Greece, Germany