The 5 Most Exciting Wine Destinations for 2026

(upbeat music) Well, hello and welcome to The Wine Access unfiltered podcast. I am running solo today. And I'm running solo for a few reasons, but primarily because I wanted to do an episode featuring my top five most exciting destinations for wine. And I wanted to just give you my opinion on it, not that other opinions don't matter, but I really wanted the opportunity to just throw a whole bunch of things at you guys based on my actual experiences. Over the last five years, I have done a ton of traveling all around the world, two a lot of wine destinations, two a lot of wine-making regions. And I have thoughts. I really genuinely feel like there are some really cool places for wine, some of which I've talked about in the show, some of which I haven't. And I really just want to share those experiences with you because I'm sure a lot of you are, especially in these months right now, thinking about planning a potential wine trip, which as you know, I always recommend doing if you are in a phase of your wine journey, which really should be always of learning. If you want to learn wine, if you want to get better at enjoying wine, if you just want to go on a vacation with wine, that's fine too. I genuinely think that this is the best way to do it. I think that getting out there into the wine regions, feeling what is around you, walking on the dirt, experiencing the food, experiencing the culture, getting a really good snapshot of that firsthand, there is no substitution for that. It just truly changes the way that you see wine. And I think there are a few places in the wine world right now that are especially exciting. Now, that is not to diminish the great wine regions of the world of which there are many. And I'm sure some of you have probably explored some of those. I'm sure for a lot of you, they're at the top of your bucket list, I'm thinking places like Natty Valley, Bordeaux. There's a bunch of them, right? A lot of them that you have thought about. But maybe there are a few that aren't on your list, aren't on your radar, and that's where we're at today. So these are my five picks for places I think are great for drinking wine and experiencing culture and places that I think are exciting and dynamic and worthy of your attention. So before we get there, if you are part of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast, Wine Club, the wine we are drinking today without hopefully giving too much away, is going to be the Katania Altah Historic Rose Malbec. It should be in your shipment. It is in, if you are watching, a very lovely wine tumbler right now by Wine Tumbler, I mean water glass because I am at a hotel where this was my best option. So here we are. I actually really don't mind these, and at a lot of places, this is like kind of a way that they enjoy wine, namely like in Italy. Like I would consider this sort of like an Italian wine tumbler. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, but my options were basically a champagne and a coupe/martini glass or this. And this felt like the better option. So you grab whatever glass you feel appropriate, ideally that's going to be a Bordeaux glass because it's a Malbec and that is a Bordeaux variety. And meet me here in whatever time that takes you and we will get started with my first pick for top wine destinations of 2026. Let's do it. (upbeat music) All right, let's start in Europe, not in France, not in Spain, and not in Italy. Let's start in your mouth please. Portugal. I went to Portugal three years ago, I think, with my then boyfriend, no husband, and we spent three or four weeks there both in the Porto region, the city of Porto and down in Lisbon. And I had wanted to go to Portugal for many, many years for a lot of reasons, but I think mostly I was attracted to the food. What I know now that I didn't know then was really how interconnected the food and the wine scene was, which should have been very obvious, but also I don't think that I realized that Porto and Lisbon are two very different cities and they give you two completely different experiences, even beyond the wine regions themselves. And one of the reasons that I love Portugal so much, especially as a place to go and drink wine, is that you can have a lot of different experiences within one country, and it's not that hard to experience it all. Lisbon and Porto are not that far from each other. It's a very quick flight to get back and forth, and it's a fantastic place to really dive into many different styles of wine. They are making so much stuff there, so let's kind of back up a little bit and talk about what it is they're doing on the wine front that I think makes it so exciting. Now of course, if you have been to Portugal and specifically in the region of Porto before, you know that this is obviously the best place. It is ground zero for Port. Port is from Porto. If you can put that together until just now, that's totally normal. A lot of people make that connection. They're like, "Oh, huh, I was today years old." And honestly, I was barely late in the game to make that connection as well. But Port is a fortified style of wine that is made in the Porto region. And the way that they do that is they harvest the grapes as they normally do right off the vine, like they were making this malbec right here, right? As if they were gonna make it exactly the same. The difference, and I say that because they're not, it's not late harvest, which I think is a little bit of a misnomer for some people. They're really just letting the grapes get to what they would normally get to. And the reason that they're doing that is because they want those acid levels to remain. So if you let those grapes go too long, then that is going to fall off. It's very hot, it's very dry. And so in the harvest time, if you are there, it can get north of like a hundred degrees. It can get very, very warm. But they bring the grapes into the wineries, which kind of sit nestled along the river. They press the grapes and they tread them. So they do a very, very gentle tread. Just to extract the juice, they let it go through fermentation, but they're halting fermentation by adding a, basically a spirit, right? A grain spirit that is going to arrest fermentation. And what that's gonna do is it's not going to allow the remainder of the natural sugar that's in the grapes to ferment into alcohol. So you basically have a wine that is a percentage of actual wine with alcohol and a percentage of very sweet, delicious grape juice. And that is basically poured in a nutshell. From there, you can have a lot of different directions in terms of how they're aging. But what's really cool is that most of the aging isn't happening in the actual wine growing part, they send it back down the river into the city. And it's in the city across the way that you're gonna find in Gaia, that you're gonna find all of these really beautiful port houses and huge, huge casks in there where they're aging their ports. Now, like I said, many different styles of port ranging from Tommy to vintage and we've actually done a whole episode on Portugal. But to me, that is actually though very cool to see, this is actually the least exciting part of Portugal and really not the reason I think it's the most exciting wine region. If you go to Portugal to be clear, you should absolutely dream port and lots of it. You should have it with a pastel de nazo, which is that lovely little mini crembroulée dessert that they do that you're finding everywhere and they're delicious. I take advantage for sure. But I think for me, one of the most exciting things about Portugal is that it's not just port. There's so many different styles of wine there and that was what made it exciting for me. That was the takeaway that I didn't expect. And it wasn't until we really spent time in both Porto and Lisbon, going to some of these restaurants, a lot of these really small restaurants where the food is fantastic. And we started kind of digging into these wine lists that had pricing that allowed you to really try and experiment lots of different things because we're talking about wines that are anywhere from like four to 10 euros a glass. So it made it really easy to just really try some unique things. And that's where I found the most exciting natural wines. It's where I started to dig into some of the more opulent wines and it was pairing really well with the food which is quite different between Porto and Lisbon. So that's part of the reason that I really fell in love with this place. The other reason is it's just so stinging, beautiful. And for me, there has to be, or it doesn't have to be, but if there isn't something that is appealing to the eye in addition to what I'm drinking, it's not that it makes for a bad experience, but I just think it makes for a much more exciting experience. So whether you are really heading into the wine growing regions outside of Porto or if you're going into Vingabarit, which if you've heard me talk about some of my favorite inexpensive white wines, that is top of the list. Those lovely Vingabarit is are so, so good. Light, bright, crispy whites, if you're someone that really loves grapes like something along [BLANK_AUDIO] which has grown there. Being a Verde is just going to be one of the best wines for your experience, especially as we're hopefully fingers crossed heading into warmer months now. And what was, I thought, so fun is when we would go to restaurants that maybe didn't have the most robust refined wine list. And I remember one specifically, they will ask you, do you want red, white, rosé, or green wine? And the green wine is living a Verde. No, of course, it's not actually green wine, but they call it Vingue Verde because it's very, very rainy in this part of Portugal, and the region's very green. And the wines actually have, because they are this white wine, they have just like a slate green tint to them, often they're in green bottles as well, which adds to the whole Vingue Verde. But I will tell you, that's very exciting. If you are going to Lisbon, which is the bigger city, slightly more metropolitan, definitely more options for like Michelin-starred restaurants, very, very hilly. So keep your heels at home, you absolutely do not need them. Very hilly, very cobblestoney, difficult-ish to traverse. So if you're hoping to like get your steps in and work on your glutes, it's a really good place to do that. But we loved it so much there because I felt like culturally, it was a place where they had a lot to offer like a major city would have, whereas Porto felt definitely like a city but smaller. It felt more almost like a bigger town smaller city. So Lisbon was really, really interesting to see, and I can definitely envision spending lots of time there, but what I love so much about that was you had all of these different options in the way of wine and food, lots of different cuisines, and I have to tell you, I think one of my favorite bars in the world is in Lisbon, and it's called Black Sheep, and it's just this really cool tiny little wine bar that you just go in, and they have no wine list. You talk to the people that work there, and you tell them kind of what you're in the mood for, and they give you lots of little taste of things, and it will be super busy, it'll be wall-to-wall people, but the treat you is if you were the only one in the whole wine bar for, you know, the 30 to 45 seconds that it takes for you to communicate what you want. And you'll get your glass of wine, and then the best part of it all is because it's Portugal, and Europe, that matter, you can take your wine, you can walk around the little square that sits there, and just really enjoy everything that beautiful city has to offer. And that, for me, still remains, I think my favorite takeaway is just the ease and the tranquility and the food and the wine because there's so many different styles, and you can really kind of stretch your palate, really stretch your wallet, and really learn about wine in a very unique way because you are seeing so many different styles. And I should note that one of the reasons that you're seeing so many different styles of wine is that, you know, sort of unlike Spain and France and Italy, maybe less of Spain, Portugal, there's so many different great varieties from there that have been planted forever, and they're not so concerned with labeling it according to Appalachian in the way that France is. And I mean that in the way that, like, you know, let's say your family has had this pot of land, you know, a vineyard, and you don't necessarily know what's growing on there. They're not so concerned about specifically making the wines according to Appalachian laws. They just want to make something delicious, and because of that, they've really kind of broken the mold for Europe in that they just make wines that are delicious. They make wines that, you know, they'll just say wine of Portugal on the label, and they're totally fine with that, and they're sort of less of a stigma in Portugal for doing that. Then there is in Italy where if you make a wine not according to county laws, or not according to Brillo laws, you really kind of lose something in a lot of ways. So Portugal is much more accepted, and I think for that reason, you're seeing so many different styles of wines and so many different types of grapes and so many different bottlings, and let's face it, because those wines are kind of human far between, you're not really seeing them make it to the United States, so it's a great opportunity to really test the waters and something unique. Okay, did I saw you on Portugal yet? Are you in? Or are you out? You're in. Okay, great. So excited. I really loved it there. I can't believe that I haven't made it more of a regular trip, but I'll mention that the wine regions to really look out for us, so the wine region, that's adjacent to Porto, where you're going to find all of the great growing for port is the Doro Valley. So you're going to be along the Doro River there just for a geography, sake. Being a Verde, I mentioned already, Barata, which is really lovely, and where you're going to find lots of different styles of grapes, Elantacio, it's closer to Lisbon, and that is where you're going to find, again, lots of different things. Elantacio makes really beautiful whites and really beautiful rosés, but we were tasting some fantastic reds there as well. Okay, we're going to stay in Europe, and I've already mentioned that we're not talking about Spain, and we're not talking about France, and we're not talking about Italy, which doesn't leave much if we're staying in Europe, but if you've been following along my wine-travel journey, this next destination should come as no surprise. And I honestly hesitate even putting this as an exciting destination, because I think in some ways, the connotation is new and still developing, and this region doesn't necessarily. It's not what you think of, but I assure you things are changing so rapidly that I really do genuinely feel like it falls in this category. And I also feel like there have been so many stigmas about this place that it really just means like a little refresh, a little restart. And of course, the country that I'm talking about in this case is Germany. Now you might remember, last year I spent about a week to 10 days somewhere in there in Germany with my friends from the German wine collection. So Jennifer, this has been on the podcast, Zach who's been on the podcast, and we've talked a lot about Germany and all of the merits, but I just. I wanted to sort of give you my, you know, clear perspective on why I think Germany is a place that is so exciting and should be on your wine destination list, especially if you're considering going to Europe. It is just such a cool place for wine. And so not what I thought it was going to be. I still don't fully remember what I thought it was, but when I got to Germany, so you know, we fly into Frankfurt and the wine region, the wine growing regions, are generally within an hour or two of the Frankfurt Airport. There's lots of different towns you can stand and lots of different regions that offer different things. And of course the Mosul, being the most famous of those German wine regions, and certainly the most stunning and impressive, it is by no means the only one you can go to nor is the only place that you can visit. But I will say if you are thinking of doing any sort of wine cruise, if that is something on your bucket list, to me, in addition to Portugal, because I think the Dora River would be a fantastic place to cruise long. It is just so incredible in a very similar way to how the Mosul is where you have these incredibly steep slopes, where all of the vines are sort of terraced down, you know, and it looks like they're just like about to fall into the water there. A river cruise would be an incredible way to see that, to get that perspective from the water looking up is just so magnificent. So if that is something that you're considering, I would definitely recommend that, but you don't have to do it that way. There's lots of other ways to do it. So why, why Germany, why is this, why is this country on my list is one of the most exciting places to visit in 2026 for wine. Well, a lot of you will already know Germany as being a place for reasling the white grape that still has the connotation of being sweet. I think if you've been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you probably know by now, not all reaslings are sweet. This is just a style in which reaslings are sometimes often made. There are bone dry reaslings, there's lovely reaslings that are, you know, just slightly off-charide. There's lots of different styles of reasling. I love reasling in Germany, it does reasling like nowhere else. And it truly is their calling card. It has been their grape for many, many, many hundreds of years. But it is not the only thing that they do. And that was why I felt it was worthy of this list because what I found when I got there and really on the first day was they are doing other grapes that I didn't know could be produced in this way outside of Burgundy. So they're doing a shard name and they're doing peanut or both incredibly well. And, you know, I think there's a lot of conversation happening within the regions of Germany, within those wine growing regions, around keeping reasling really sort of the founding father of this place and really not moving out into those quote unquote French Burgundy and burials. But there is something to be said for how well they're producing them because they truly are rivalling what is happening in Burgundy and they're doing it for a fraction of the price. So I will say we've had the rings, it's, by the way, Pinot Noir in Germany is not called Pinot Noir. It's called spate Burgender. But we went to this winery called rings in the faults and that was a place that's far ish removed from the Mosul River where you're not really going to see as much reasling. It is where spate Burgender is planted. There is shard made there. there. are other grape varieties there and they grow incredibly well because of the climate that is around there. And this is why I think it's so important for you or whomever to go and see these regions because they are just so unique and different and to feel and experience what the grapes are feeling is something that there is no books to substitute for. So if you are a lover of reasoning in addition to Pina Nore and Shardinay and Germany should absolutely be on your list, the other thing that was just such a huge takeaway and again, I think this really speaks to this list and why I chose certain things on this list. Don't get me wrong, I love the great wine regions of the world. But to me, the most exciting places for wine right now are the places that offer something beyond just wine. I don't know how you are but I don't think wine should be consumed in a vacuum. I'm very rarely just sitting down and doing nothing besides drinking wine. I've already known that, it does happen. But very often I'm in a different setting, I am doing other things or I'm having less of wine and then I'm doing something. And that is really how I want to experience wine in these other places and I think somewhere like Germany really allows you to do that. So in addition to obviously seeing the wine regions hiking and walking and biking are a very big part of the German culture there eating, oh my goodness, I was fully expecting to eat nothing but like, be an urnetsl and big, heavy foods because that's kind of what you think of when you think of German foods here in the U.S. But when I tell you that I had the best French picnic of my life ate the most delicious, delicious asparagus which they call Spargel and during the spring when it's Spargel season you should absolutely eat all the asparagus both white and green. When I tell you that that is just chef's kiss not to be missed, I really truly need it. The food really was so surprising and I just had the best time really kind of branching out into all of the different things that Germany had to offer on the wine front and on the food front. So if you're someone that loves more of an outdoorsy culture, Germany should really be on your list because I think that they love their biking, they love their walking and along I will say along the Mosel River they have these beautiful paths for you to do that. So you can, you literally can go wine tasting during the day or in the latter part of the day and do all of your like outdoorsy activities in the morning or in the afternoon and you know have it really be kind of cohesive and part of the overall experience which I highly highly recommend. Obviously lots of history there as well, lots to do. So I don't know if you're thinking about a wine trip to Europe and Germany isn't on your list, I hope it is now because I think you'd have a great time. I know for me it was, it changed my life. It's a place that I every time I get the opportunity to talk about, I do in the way that I talk about Portugal and yeah, hopefully your mind's convinced. Okay, shall we go to number three? Let's do it. Alright, let's jump all the way down to the Southern hemisphere. Down to Argentina, I sort of teased or maybe more than teased at the top of the episode when I told you that our wine today was a Malbec from Mendoza in Argentina. I went to Mendoza a few years ago and I just kind of expected to drink Malbec the whole time honestly and I don't be wrong, I drank a lot of Malbec which is a wonderful grape. But sort of similar to my Germany experience, it was far from the only thing that I drank by the way, I don't even think I talked about the sparkling wines being in Germany which is a whole other thing. Let me just pause real quick and rewind to let you know that if you are thinking of going to Germany and you love champagne, I mean it's a great place to check out all of the incredible sects, EKT, the sect that is being produced in Germany. Okay, let's bring it back to Mendoza. I know I just had to take a little detour there. Bring it back to Mendoza and it maybe think of that because in Mendoza, like I said, lots of Malbec, but we are at elevation. We are talking about a wine region that is so spectacularly beautiful in the Southern hemisphere and if you are living in the US like I am, one of the things that I love so much about going to Mendoza is you don't really have the jet lag like you do when you go to Europe, which is lovely. So you are depending on where you are in the US, really kind of in the same time zone-ish area. It is a rather long flight. You are going to fly all the way down to Buenos Aires. Likely probably Sunday night there and then fly up to Mendoza. It's a cute little regional airport. Definitely don't recommend driving. It's quite far. But you are going to get up there and then from there, the region is quite vast. To see lots to do. Why is this on my list? Well, Mendoza, to me, is out in front of all of the other wine regions right now in terms of how they are welcoming tourists and giving them that cohesive experience that I mentioned in Germany and they are doing it at the next level. Part of the reason they are doing it at the next level is because they don't really have the rules and regulations that Europe is bound by and places in the US are bound by. They can do a lot more there. For example, the winery that makes this wine that we have today, Coutinho Zapata, one of the best in all of Argentina, and really the winery that helped to elevate the region, that helped to popularize the region in the US and other places. Coutinho Zapata, really, they are doing something that, and leading the charge, something that I think more winery should be doing, which is giving you the opportunity to obviously taste wine and learn about what they are doing there. But also, I want to maybe have lunch there. I want to maybe have dinner there. And, gosh, would it be cool if I could also stay there? A lot of these wineries are starting to build restaurants. They're building hotels, they're building places for you to have full-on experiences beyond just wine tasting. And that, to me, is really where Mendoza is a step above the rest because it is a place where you're not just drinking wine. You could be doing lots of other things, including getting some beautiful R&R. I mentioned in my last episode with Candace, there aren't that many great spa experiences. I found in some of these wine regions, I think Mendoza is probably the exception of that rule. There are some great spots there. So Mendoza, obviously a place for Malbec, and like I said, you will be drinking lots of Malbec, but you will also be shocked by all of the different styles of Malbec, and similar to how Portugal you can drink everything from a really lovely, very interesting, kind of quirky natural wine to something rich and powerful and robust and red. Mendoza is very similar. There are so many different styles of wines being made because of a lot of the same reason in Portugal where they're just, they're just making, they're just experimenting. There's so much experimentation happening in Mendoza, and I think that is what makes it so exciting. I think it's what makes it worthy of your time. Don't get me wrong. I love going to places where they do one thing really, really well, and I think there is absolutely something to be said about. If I am planning a big trip where I'm spending more than three or four days there, I want diversity. I want to try lots of different things. You don't necessarily get that if you're going to Bordeaux. You don't necessarily get that if you're going to Tuscany. I really love Napa Valley, but and they do make lots of other things. But in reality, you know, Cabernet Sauvignon is what you're going to be drinking the most of. That's not necessarily true in Mendoza. And for me, that is why I think it's worthy of spending a week there. So like I said, fly into B.A. get up there and then kind of move around a little bit, really experience what's going on there. I mean, my goodness, if you're there in the winter months, it's summer there. How lovely. What a great opportunity and to escape this weather if you're not lucky enough to live somewhere like Florida where the weather isn't terrible in January. So it's a great, great time to travel to this other hemisphere. They're making everything from natural biogenomic wines and really great ones to sparkling wines because of the elevation there. They're getting really interesting shardnays. So Ketengazapata in addition to some of the Malbecs that, you know, I really, really love and single vineyard historic rose like the one we're having here. They're also making these shardnays that, you know, similar to Germany, really are rivaling what is happening in Burgundy and kind of giving them a run for their money. Now, they're very much their own thing, but I do think there's something to be said for shardnay from Argentina, the white bones, by the way, if you haven't had the white bones, shardnay, chef's kiss. Outside of Mendoza, there is of course Patagonia that you could obviously quite a ways away. I think that's the reason I'm here. I'm here with the white bones. any questions? wine destination where I can have a great city experience and have a great wine destination experience and you know, Portugal is great for that but I do think that there is a BA is such a powerhouse for an incredible city with great food, great cocktail culture, great wine culture and then you get out into the vineyards and you start exploring and kind of messing around and seeing that. But my goodness, you know, seeing those, seeing the Andes mountains, you know, as your backdrop when you're just cruising through Mendoza is just, is something to be hold and there is no substitute for that. I mean, you see it in person and experience it and you've got an empanada in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. What else do you need? Really? Speaking of mountains and altitude, I would be remiss not to talk about the wine in front of me, hopefully in front of you. We are talking about a malback that is grown at elevation. This is sourced from five high altitude sites ranging from 3,018 feet to 4,757 feet of elevation. That is a lot of elevation for contacts by the way. Heak elevation in like Napa is like 3,000 feet at 1,300, 1,400 is where like the Appalachian starts for how mountains. So we're talking about some serious elevation here. And really what that does is, you know, it gives, it gives the grapes exposition to sun and gives them this concentration of flavor. But it also gives them thicker skin. So you get this like usually smaller berries and very, very intense flavor. So if you're someone that really loves these like intense wines that still have lift, still brightness that aren't getting that intensity necessarily from being grown in like direct sunlight on the valley floor, like some of the places we see in Napa Valley and both in Nandosa. You're getting concentration and brightness in a glass with elevation, which is super, super fun. With malback, you can almost always expect it to be kind of that like purpley violet hue. So if you're looking at the glass and you're like, no, that's very purple violet, most likely it's going to be malback. It's usually very juicy. It has that kind of violet tendency to it. Very, rarely are you going to get any of those like purisines like that green bell pepper that you get from caberni swimming on very, rarely are you going to get anything that is like in the black olive camp like Sarah. It really is kind of its own thing. And to me, malback always gives you like juiciness, but spiciness, but also something kind of salty as well. And I think especially when we're talking about Argentinian malback like we have here, this is coming from more of the, this is coming from historic rows. So these are very, very special plots of land. You know, Katie, thing is about it has incredible, incredible vineyards that they work with. So these are even, you know, even more special. These are plucked from some of the best rows in those vineyards. So that you get this very intense concentration, but you still get this freshness. And I think when we're talking about malback from the best vineyards of Argentina, that should be your takeaway when you go there. When you're tasting outside of a catangasbata, when you're tasting with like zucardi, for example, another great winery that has a great restaurant. Sebastian's zucardi is doing incredible things with those wines there in making wines that have these concentration, but a lot of times he's doing them in concrete so that they retain their freshness, they retain their vibrancy. And that is very exciting because you don't necessarily see those two things go hand in hand in a lot of places. You're definitely not seeing that in Bordeaux. Most of Napa Valley is aging. They're big opulent wines in big French oak casks. Nothing wrong with that. But I think what's so exciting is that you could see the power of some of these places in a very transparent way. And I love that about Mendoza so much. But again, when you're done with those wines, when you don't want to drink them, you have all these other options to play with as well. And I just, you know, I love having lots of options. Maybe that's a me thing. Maybe that's why this list is just my opinion because I just genuinely, I have a point of view when it comes to tasting wines and going to places. I want to taste everything. I want to taste lots of different things. And I want that. I want to bounce back and forth between things because I get a little bit of pellet fatigue. I don't know about you. Hopefully not too much. Okay. Speaking of pellet fatigue, I think that we should jump out of South America back into the Northern Hemisphere to another place where you might think that you could get some pellet fatigue. But if you play your cards right and you do it right, you absolutely will not. And that place is has some robles. You guys have heard me talk about Paso a bit on this podcast. I just love it so much. It is one of those places that I continuously go back to. And if you are following me on my socials on Somnivon, you know that I've done a lot of partnerships with that region, which is something I love to do to be clear. But I don't go back to the same place as much as I do with Paso. I just keep going back there. And the reason that I keep going back there is every time I go back, there is something truly new and unique and different, something worthy of another dedicated visit. And I can't say that that's necessarily true of a lot of wine regions. A lot of wine regions figure out what it is they do and they do it really well. And then they just kind of like, they lean in and they relaxed a little bit. To me, Paso is a place that easily could have just been like, all right, we figured it out. We do big, roamed style, reds, occasionally a little bit of cabri-somnion that people are going to tell us taste a little like Napa Valley, but we're going to keep doing our own thing. And they could have easily just stopped there, but they didn't. They continued to develop the downtown. They continued to invest into places like Sensorio. They continued to be a community-driven place that supports new chefs and new talent so that every time you go back to the region, there is something new and exciting to see. Every time I've gone back there and I think this was like my fifth visit that I just completed over the fall, I don't think that I have revisited a single restaurant once. I keep going to new places and they're all great every time. And every time I'm like, are you sure that we should go to this new place? I really love this other place before and then we do. And I'm like, I'm so glad that we did that. It's just so rare to have an experience like that. So let me back up a little bit. If you absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, I am talking about the region of Paso. Deep breath, robles, I know. Some of you, it's like, I get it. I know, I know robles feels wrong. ROB, LES. Robles is more of the Spanish pronunciation. I have had this conversation with everyone that I can have this conversation with to ensure that the way that the locals who live in Paso say it is Paso Robles. I understand there's a Spanish pronunciation. I fully get that. But if the locals are staying Paso Robles, very consistently. If the regional boards are staying Paso Robles, if the Y-makers are staying Paso Robles, if this is a consistent reliant of a place, I'm calling it Paso Robles. So just to get that out of the air, because I know that we will get some comments on it. As I always do with every Instagram video about Paso Robles, but I promise from here on out, we'll just call it Paso. We've talked about this a number of times, because we've had Chris from Mighty Cat Mushrooms on there on our holiday series. We want to rewind and we can have a recap of that. You are welcome to do that. The Paso is situated really in the middle directly between San Francisco and LA, making it a perfect place if you are a California local to drive to, because we're talking about about a three and a half to four-ish hour drive depending on where you are and either those two places. But they do have their own airports. You can fly into slow, so the San Luis Obispo airport. It's a very lovely, very cute little airport, regional airport. And then from here, you're about a 30 to 45 minute drive, very easy drive. And I will say logistically, if you're like, I don't know, this sounds like it's not. It's way easier to get to the Napa or Sonoma if you're not flying into the Sonoma airport. And American does fly direct from a few different hubs. But once you're there, the rental car agency is like literally breaks out of baggage claim. It couldn't be easier. I mean, literally from the time that I get off the plane to when I'm in a rental car is like, I don't know, 20 minutes. Like it's nothing. And then I'm in Paso in another 30 to 40 minutes after that. So we're talking about from touchdown to head and bed in a hotel room. We're talking about, I don't know, an hour and change. That's nothing. That's easy, easy, peasy. And I've done that flight from Philly through Phoenix into slow. That's what you're done. Okay. So now we've got the logistics out of the way. Where we are located. We are firmly in what is called the Central Coast of California. The Central Coast produces a lot of different wines, a lot of different styles. Wine Paso specifically is really known as being the place for Ron Blens, Ron style, red and white wines. So we're talking about Sera and Grinache dominant wines. We're talking about whites. We're talking about Grinache Bonk. We're talking about Vione, we're talking about Marseille and Rousseau. We are talking about anything that is grown in the Ron is really. great in Paso as well. That said, because Paso isn't just one thing and because my makers are having so much fun with playing around with lots of different varieties, you are seeing a lot of other really interesting things happen outside of their own varieties. So I mentioned Cabernet Sauvignon, they're doing incredibly great Cabernet Sauvignon, they're doing great sparkling wine, they're doing beautiful shardinets, a lot of which are actually being sourced from out slightly outside of Paso, but you're seeing lots of different styles of wine within this one particular wine region, which means if you're going to a wine or you're going to taste a broad range of things, you're going to taste a great sparkling, you're going to taste a great shardinet, you're going to taste a big opulent red wine, and then from there you have so many different options beyond that, because you have this community that has really embraced a lot of the artisans and talent to do other things. So you can go somewhere like Tin City. So I mentioned Chris Battle, who was on our podcast about mushrooms, Tin City, is where his situation is, his business is, and it's this place that you can go and walk around, it's lots of different, you should try to find out, there's a great little documentary on how Tin City was born, but Tin City is really just this place where you can walk around, taste different wines because there's lots of different tasting rooms in there, Edo Pasta is there, so there's a pasta maker, there's the mushroom place, there's so many different things that you can do in Paso, and it's just such a cool place because it becomes a creativity outlet. It becomes this thing that allows you to jump between wine tasting to spirit tasting, to cider, to ice cream, and it doesn't feel out of place, it feels really, really normal. The other thing that I'll mention is that in Paso, downtown Paso, hotels have gotten so much better, lots of new restaurants opening, there's fantastic cocktail scene, and that is really unique. I mean you don't usually get all of those things in one, and then lastly I'll mention Sensorio, I think there is something to be said for this place, I don't know why more wine regions don't do this, but I think it's one of the coolest things, it's this huge plot of land that they basically turned into an outdoor art installation with lights so that you can go and walk around and have something really fun and unique to do in the evening. I won't give too much way and honestly even me talking about it, it wouldn't do it justice, but it is worth going to see and truly one of the most special things that a wine region has ever done, and something that I hope to see, like I said in more places, because it's really cool and it's really unique. Okay, we finally arrived at number five, most exciting wine destination of 2026. Where should I start with this? Okay, so I visited this region a year ago and it wasn't a region that was really on my list, it was a place that I was like, you know, it's interesting, like it sounds really cool, but I don't know, I mean like how great can it really be? Great as it turns out, really wonderful, and I think the best part of it is it is a stone's throw from one of my favorite cities in the world, London, so I'm of course talking about the wine regions of Great Britain, of the UK, situated about an hour from London, you will find Sessics and Kent, and those places are making some extraordinarily wonderful, wonderful wines. It was funny because when I was in London, I spent a few days there first, I went to a couple places by myself and I talked to some locals and I had mentioned that I was heading out into the wine regions there and they were very confused and I couldn't understand why they were very confused and I quickly realized that even the locals there, the people that live in London, they still don't really understand what is happening out in these wine growing regions, there's still a lot of stigma about the wines being produced there, and so the reaction for the most part from the locals there was like, "Ooh, good luck, are you going to be drinking like crap wine basically for the next few days?" And of course that made me very nervous, but then I got out there and I was like, "No, these wines are fantastic, they're really, really good." And probably the most surprising thing about is I had anticipated because the only thing that we're really seeing here in the US exported out of there is sparkling wine. I had fully anticipated going to these wine growing regions and only drinking bubbles. It's the only thing we're hearing about because the other stuff, there's just not enough up, they're consuming it within the UK, within Europe and it's not really being exported out of there because of nothing more than quantity. It has nothing to do with the quality thing, there's just not enough of it, which makes a lot of sense because the sparkling wine is very much the same thing. But if you have been reading anything in the news in the last five to 10 years, you would have seen that a lot of the champagne producers are starting to buy up land in the UK and starting to make wines under their UK label because it's so exciting. Chalky soils, a little bit cooler there. It's a place that you're not going to get the sunshine in the way that you will get it in Paso or in Mendoza, but it is a really beautiful place and I sort of liken it to like if you want to live your best pride and prejudice, bridged your chin life while also wine tasting. UK sparkling wine regions or just wine regions are kind of the place that you should go visit. It's really cool, it's really quaint, it's really lovely, you're not going to find really opulent hotels, the food will be fine, but it will be really tranquil and beautiful and you'll feel like you're living your best like the holiday movie life, right, where you can kind of bundle up a little bit and lean into the fact that it's kind of, it's kind of misty, it could be raining, but it'll still be really beautiful in the way that the UK is really beautiful when it rains and the wines are very inexpensive for the most part. The sparkling wines are a little bit more, but we were drinking incredible peen and war as an incredible shard maze because those are the two grapes that are being used to make the sparkling wine, they're being grown really well and they're really trying, they're really figuring out exactly how to grow those grapes, not just for a sparkling wine, but also for still wines as well. So that was such a huge takeaway and I think a region that will continue to get more exciting over the years and I think if you're going to be in London anyway, which I know a lot of you go to London or fly through London, it's well worth taking a day or two just to get out into the countryside and just experience what they have to offer there. It's very easy and I don't think that you'll regret it. You know, London is a great place to experience wine as well certainly. You've got like noble rot there, there's tons of places to have cocktails, great food in the city of London, great shopping as well. So you can have this experience that feels like you're doing lots of different things and again going back to my argument with Buenos Aires and Mendoza, I think London and the UK's sparkling, the UK wine regions are very very similar. You can have these incredible experiences across the span of a week, the difference in the UK is you don't have to take a play there, you can just drive there. So even if you only have a few days, that's a great destination for you and a very low lift in terms of what it's going to take to make it happen. I think that's all I have to say I'm UK. I honestly, I'm refraining from saying too much because I kind of want you to experience it for yourself and honestly it's still very young and there isn't a lot to say but there is a lot to experience and I do think it is worthy of your time. And then I'll also say because all of the other wine regions are as well, they're still iterating, they're still really excited about continuing to make improvements to farm differently, to make the wines differently. I mean they're actively trying to improve and it was very clear after visiting producer after producer after producer that no one is sitting back resting on their laurels. They were very excited to continue pushing their industry and their region forward, which to me makes it one of the most exciting destinations to drink wine in in 2026. All right you guys those are my top five wine destinations that I'm so excited about for 2026. First up, of course we had Portugal. I think that was probably no surprise for a lot of you. Then we talked about Germany, then we talked about Mendoza, headed off to California to Paso and then brought it back home in the UK. But I'm curious what some of your most exciting wine regions are. Those are just the ones that I've been to. I know there's a lot out there. You guys have been to as well that you'll probably DM me about me like what about this place? I would love to hear it. I would love to know what you're excited about. I still have many many trips coming up in the next few months including one place that I'm revisiting and one place that I have never been to before. I'm very excited about it. I will be reporting back on more especially because this whole season is about wine and travel. So I will leave you to go plan whatever trip you have coming up. I hope it's some of fantastic. I hope it's somewhere that has something delicious to eat and drink because those to me are the two most important parameters of any trip. But most of all, I hope it's somewhere that you've been dying to go and get to cross off your bucket list. But do let me know. Slide into our DMs on the Wine Access Unfiltered Instagram. Let us know where you're excited about and what you want to see more of on this podcast. We're still in early stages of this brand new season about when travels. So if you have questions, I would love any inspiration you guys have for future episodes, places that you're curious about, themes you want to talk about, anything and everything is fair game. Once again, if you were not a member of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast Wine Club, you can find everything you need to join in the description below. It features four wines that are selected by myself and the Wine Access team, always tying back to the episodes that we have here. But in addition to the wine being featured in the episode, I also do separate tasting videos where I'm just talking about that wine specifically. So if you don't feel like you got enough wine talk about this specific wine today, you can always head to those videos and really kind of deep dive with me in there. So if you want to join me in drinking while listening or watching this podcast on YouTube, certainly do sign up. You get 10% off of all of your wine access purchases. When you do sign up, it's 120 bucks plus tax, about it includes shipping. So come drink with me and come hang out with me. Slide into my DMs. I hope you love this episode. By the way, I'm joining you from my hotel room in Miami right now where it is so warm. I'm so happy that I got to escape the cold. But this is just week one of a very long set of travel that I have in front of me. So get ready for some on the road content you guys. It's gonna be a great time. All right, I hope you were drinking something wonderful. Cheers to you all. Whatever last you're drinking and I'll see you all soon. Bye.