Off The Beaten Path Wine Regions Worth Visiting
Go your own way.
By Erin Henderson
You don’t have to look very hard to read the headlines screaming about the chaos of over-tourism in Europe.
From surfing in Venice’s Grand Canal, to carving names into the stone walls in Rome’s Colosseum, to sleeping off a drunken stupor in a closed section of the Eiffel Tower, the crowds are flocking to Europe and bringing their worst behaviours with them.
But even the polite and respectful visitors are pushing popular cities to the brink: crowds, line-ups, and the inevitable price-hikes for hotels, restaurants, and cabs.
It’s making life miserable for locals, and I can’t imagine it’s that much fun for visitors. I returned to Italy for a three week trip to four regions that was flanked by weekends in Rome. I hadn’t been back to the city in a decade and was shocked at the thick, chaotic crowds. Below on the left, is a picture of my sister and me sitting on the edge of the Trevi Fountain in 2009; sure there were people around, but nothing like it was last spring. It was stationed off with police guards as crowds five and six deep sat on shoulders, elongated selfie sticks, and pushed their hands into the air to capture a photo. The Pantheon was even worse with hundreds of visitors crowded into the small square, made even smaller by stanchions and armed guards wrangling people, like sheep, into specific, demarcated areas.
Wine regions are experiencing an uptick in visitors as well. Heck, even here in Ontario, Niagara’s main thoroughfare, which is dotted with wineries and leads into picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake, can be backed up with bumper-to-bumper cars. In the busy season, a 10-minute drive can easily triple in time.
But that’s nothing for the world’s most prestigious wine regions. Driving from San Francisco to Napa Valley, an 80-kilometre stretch, should only take an hour or so. But it’s not uncommon for the trip to stretch to two or three hours thanks to the volume of people trying to pile into the small area.
In Beaune, the main village of Burgundy in France, bus after bus flow into the small town, as visitors fill sidewalks and crowd into cafés.
Tuscany is incredibly beautiful. But it’s nearly become a write-off in summer for the hoards.
So what’s a wine lover to do? If you really want to visit these leading wine regions – and you should – one option is to visit in the quieter off-seasons. The weather is comfortably cooler, the crowds have thinned, and the pace has slowed to something less frenetic.
Of course, not all of us have that option: with kids and work schedules, often our only options are to travel during the height of tourist season.
If I were you, I would visit the wineries less travelled. You will save time, money, and enjoy the breathing room of a wine region that has yet to come in the crosshairs of the tourist radar.
Below is a short and ever-growing list of some of the places I’ve visited that off the beaten path that I’ve enjoyed over the years.
Soave
Soave, located in the Veneto in Italy’s north, is hands down one of the most staggeringly beautiful places I have ever been (along with its neighbour, Prosecco.) Soave itself is a small, medieval walled city, a population of less than 8,000 people. Surrounded by the lush and green foot hills of the Dolomite mountains, the soaring slopes lined with pergola-trained grape vines in the brownish-grey basalt volcanic soils, it’s devastatingly beautiful.
Prosecco
A UNESCO World Heritage site, Prosecco is about an hour’s drive from Venice. The steep and winding roads offer spectacular scenery, though a challenge for those of us who suffer from motion sickness, but the views from the dizzying tops of these precariously angled slopes are utterly breathtaking. The vineyard bluffs are nearly a straight drop, and the ancient soil so crumbly it’s impossible to use tractors and machinery. Grapes are picked by hand, and in many vineyards dumped in buckets attached to an electronic pully, which looks like an old-fashioned clothesline, to bring the grapes down to the bottom of the hill.
Rioja
Logroño, population 150-thousand, is the main city in the Rioja region. As tourists squeeze into increasingly unwelcoming Barcelona, and one of my favourite cities in the world, Madrid, Rioja seems to be left behind by many visitors. Rioja, which also offers charming medieval villages, exceptional walking and biking paths, has excellent restaurants at all price points, but even the swanky Michelin-starred places (which as of 2024, there were seven in the region), are still more afforadable than counterparts in other European countries.
Vinho Verde
Portugal is gaining in popularity for many excellent reasons: weather, accessibility, friendly people, and the Euro goes much further here than it does in neighbouring countries. Porto, while catching on with the rest of the world, is still manageable, though the stunning waterfront tourist centre is a thrum of energy and mostly foreign bodies. But just north of Porto is the Vinho Verde wine region – a winding and hilly area that spans about 130 kilometers from the city of Porto to Melgaço and Monção at the Spanish border. Each of the nine subregions boast loads of beautiful places to stay and eat, along with loads of activities beyond winery-hopping. Highly recommend.
San Luis Obispo
California is a bustling place with people eager to visit world-famous wineries and sample world famous wines. Of course, Sonoma and Napa Valleys, the Queen and King of the Golden State’s wine regions. To discover a slightly calmer pace and very good wines, check out San Luis Obispo (known as SLO, if that gives you any indication of the general vibe). Still, the area has caught on, so there will be lots of tourists, especially on weekends, summers and holidays, but it’s generally more laid back than the hectic energy of more popular wine regions.
Your next read: Wine Tripping Through Vinho Verde
