For wine lovers, there's never been a better time to drink outside of your comfort zone. If you're starting to get into wine, the worst thing to do is let yourself be in a rut-always drinking French wine, or only red, or Southern Hemisphere strictly.
Here are some of the wine regions you should be considering above all for you to get that wine you are looking for.
South Africa
The wine industry has made dramatic strides since then to produce tasty juice that reflects South Africa's unique climate-fairly hot, with cooling winds. James Tidwell, a master sommelier based in Texas, and a huge champion of South African wines said that in some two decades, South Africa winemakers had gone from isolated to some of the most connected movers and shakers.
Valle d'Aosta, Italy
This mountainous region lies at the crossroads between Switzerland, Italy, and France, a unique cultural hybrid that has its own grape varieties and a perfect climate for wine grapes. Patrick Bennett, a sommelier at Craftbar in New York City, worked the harvest at Les Granges estate in VDA, as he calls the region for short. Grapes in this region are all native and many of them rarely grow elsewhere. They also had specific flavor profile and a very unusual name like Vien de Nus, Fumin, Petit Rouge.
Alsace, France
Among connoisseurs, Alsace is famous for its weighty, age-worthy white wines-dry riesling, gewürztraminer, and pinot gris, above all. Yet, it is often eclipsed by other French regions like Burgundy or by German Riesling. Sommeliers, however, prize Alsatian wines for their mouthwatering acidity, their rich texture, and their affordability compared with other world-class wines.
Savoie, France
The Savoie is tucked into eastern France, just near Switzerland. Its white wines are made from either the crisp, bright grape jacquère or the round, sexy altesse. As Smeltz puts it, the whites of Savoy are "ripe, lifted up by pronounced acid, super autumnal".
Jerez, Spain
Sherry is one of the world's most complex and underappreciated wines. Made through a "solera" system that incorporates older wine with more recent vintages, sherry is an amber-hued fortified wine that can be dry and bright, or rich and sweet; its grapes are grown in the region surrounding Jerez, in hot southern Spain.
Greece
The wines of Greece are made with grape names that are incredibly hard to spell and pronounce: assyrtiko (white) and agiorgitiko (red), as two examples. But if you can get a hold of a good bottle of Greek wine, you've found a gem, because there are some fantastic wines in that country at great prices.
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