The World's Best Wine Estates to Visit

A great wine can be enjoyed anywhere, but it can only be understood in one place, the vineyard that made it. To stand on the slope where the vines grow, to walk the cool cellars where the wine sleeps, and to taste it at its source is to grasp something no tasting note can convey. For the traveler who loves wine, a journey to the great estates is among the most rewarding of all, and the finest wine regions have become destinations in their own right.

Champagne is perhaps the most theatrical. Beneath the towns of Reims and Épernay lie miles of chalk cellars carved deep into the earth, where millions of bottles rest in silence, and the great houses, from Moët & Chandon to Krug, whose wines our guide to the prestige Champagnes describes, receive visitors in surroundings of real grandeur. To descend into those cellars is to feel the weight of the region's history.

Burgundy offers a quieter, more intimate pilgrimage, its heart the golden town of Beaune with its famous medieval hospices and its ring of legendary villages, where a visitor can walk past the modest gate of Romanée-Conti itself. Bordeaux, by contrast, impresses through architecture, its grand châteaux standing like stately homes among the vines, and a growing number now welcome guests for tours and tastings. Further south, the cypress lined hills of Tuscany combine great wine with some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, and estates such as Antinori have built spectacular modern wineries designed to be visited.

The new world has embraced wine tourism most enthusiastically of all. California's Napa Valley, home to the cult cabernets, offers a polished culture of tasting rooms, fine dining, and hospitality, while in Spain's Rioja the striking, architect designed estates have turned wine visits into destinations of design as much as taste. Everywhere, the pattern is the same, that the world's great wine regions now offer not only bottles but experiences, pairing their cellars with luxurious places to stay and tables worthy of the wine.

For the traveler, a visit to a great estate transforms the way its wine is understood forever, turning a name on a label into a place, a family, and a memory. Arranging access to the finest estates, many of which receive visitors only by private appointment, is exactly the kind of journey Pampered Pursuit can plan; to begin, simply contact us.