Regions
Wine regions
425 places across 28 countries, 297 of them carrying a legal designation. Where a wine comes from usually tells you more about how it tastes than the grape does — because climate does most of the work.
Burgundy is a region. Chablis is an appellation within it. “Unoaked Chardonnay” is a style. WineHQ keeps them apart — and keeps every place, from a country’s largest region down to a single hillside, on one route rather than splitting appellations onto a competing path. What distinguishes them is data: each page says what kind of place it is and which legal designation, if any, protects the name.
A French AOC controls the varieties, the yields and often the ageing. An American Viticultural Area controls where the fruit grew and nothing else. A South African Wine of Origin certifies that the origin, vintage and variety on the label are true. Every place page states which of those its designation actually does, because reading one country’s rules into another’s label is the commonest mistake there is.
Argentina
The country that made Malbec an international variety, growing it at altitude in the rain shadow of the Andes.
Argentina wine in depth →Armenia
Home to the oldest known winery in the world, and a modern wine industry barely two decades old.
Armenia wine in depth →Australia
Shiraz country, but also home to some of the world’s oldest producing vines and a serious cool-climate sector.
Austria
Grüner Veltliner, precise dry Riesling and increasingly serious reds, under a regional DAC appellation system.
Austria wine in depth →Bulgaria
A major supplier of inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon to Britain in the 1980s, rebuilding around its indigenous varieties.
Bulgaria wine in depth →Canada
A cold-climate producer whose viticulture depends on large lakes, and the world’s leading source of icewine.
Canada wine in depth →Chile
A long, narrow country with reliable growing conditions, and the place where Carmenère was rediscovered.
Croatia
An Adriatic country with a long viticultural history, and the place DNA analysis traced Zinfandel back to.
Croatia wine in depth →England
A cool-climate producer whose traditional-method sparkling wine has become internationally competitive within a single generation.
England wine in depth →France
The country whose regional names — Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux — became the world’s vocabulary for wine styles.
Georgia
The country holding the earliest widely accepted archaeological evidence for winemaking, and the home of qvevri vessels.
Georgia wine in depth →Germany
The world’s benchmark for Riesling, and a country whose labelling system rewards a little study more than almost any other.
Germany wine in depth →Greece
One of the oldest wine cultures in the world, now best known internationally for Assyrtiko from Santorini and Xinomavro from the north.
Greece wine in depth →Hungary
Home of Tokaji, one of the world’s great sweet wines, and of a dry Furmint category that has grown rapidly.
Hungary wine in depth →Italy
The most varietally diverse wine country on earth, with hundreds of indigenous grapes still in commercial production.
Japan
A humid, monsoon-affected country making delicate white wine from Koshu, a variety grown almost nowhere else.
Japan wine in depth →Lebanon
One of the oldest winemaking places on earth, and a modern industry that has continued through circumstances that would have stopped most.
Lebanon wine in depth →New Zealand
The country that redefined what Sauvignon Blanc could smell like, and a serious source of cool-climate Pinot Noir.
New Zealand wine in depth →Portugal
A small country with an unusually large stock of indigenous grape varieties, and the origin of Port and Madeira.
Portugal wine in depth →Romania
One of Europe’s largest wine producers by volume, and one of its least exported.
Romania wine in depth →Serbia
A long-established Balkan wine country rebuilding around its own variety after decades of international plantings.
Serbia wine in depth →Slovenia
A small producer of considerable influence, and one of the two places where the modern orange wine revival began.
Slovenia wine in depth →South Africa
A producer with a documented history back to the seventeenth century, best known for Chenin Blanc and increasingly for old-vine wines.
South Africa wine in depth →Spain
Home of Tempranillo, Garnacha, sherry and cava, and of an ageing-classification system that tells you how long a wine was matured before release.
Switzerland
A substantial producer almost nobody outside the country tastes, because the Swiss drink nearly all of it themselves.
Switzerland wine in depth →United States
Dominated by California, but with significant cool-climate production in Oregon, Washington and New York.
United States wine in depth →Uruguay
The one genuinely maritime wine country in South America, and the world’s centre for Tannat.
Uruguay wine in depth →Wales
A small but established cool-climate wine industry, concentrated in the south and along the Welsh Marches.
Wales wine in depth →