Travel
One of the best reasons to take a trip is to see how people in other cultures eat and drink — and to join in the fun. Our travel section includes trip reports from all over the world, with deep dives into the vineyards, breweries, distilleries, and bars you’ll find there.
Top Travel Posts:
A Visit to the Don Julio Tequila Distillery
Where to Drink in Asheville, North Carolina
A Visit to Suntory’s Yamazaki Distillery
Harvest in Chile’s Casablanca Valley – A Dusty Paradise
Revisiting the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, 2018
A Visit to Jack Daniel’s Distillery
Exploring Port Wine: Touring Porto and the Douro Valley
Drinking the Costa del Sol – A Trip from Barcelona, Spain to Lisbon, Portugal
If you find yourself in the quaint town of Healdsburg on the northern end of Sonoma County, you’ll find the tasting room of Cartograph Wines in a primo spot just a block off the town’s lovely main square. Cartograph is a brand established by Alan Baker & Serena Lourie in 2008, and it’s been quietly…
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You may have never heard of MGP, but chances are you’ve already had the whiskey the company makes. MGP is the largest supplier of sourced, aged whiskey in America for the many companies that don’t actually distill themselves (Non-Distilling Producers or NDPs), and they’re also a contract distilling powerhouse, working with customers from the earliest…
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Winter is a wonderful time to visit Napa Valley. Even though the vines are bare and the weather is often wet, the crowds are at a minimum and it’s easy to get dinner and room reservations just about anywhere (except for the French Laundry, of course). We recently took a chilly weekend to visit four…
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On the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, you’ll find the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa. When they say resort, they aren’t kidding. This is a sprawling campus that includes a full on water park, massive public areas, a golf course, four restaurants, and four bars to match. The High Velocity sports…
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Very few people are doing American single malt whisky with solid success, but one of the outliers has long been House Spirits, an early mover in this space and the brand behind Westward Single Malt, which we reviewed in one of its earliest incarnations in 2013. Today, House Spirits is known as the brand that…
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You might have missed it, but something’s been up at Napa’s Clos du Val winery, namely that it’s been moving out of the supermarket and into the high-end. We reviewed some of Clos du Val’s newest releases a few months back, but more recently we visited its revamped, redesigned tasting room on the Silverado Trail.…
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Winery visits are fun and all, but they tend to follow a predictable routine. Walk around the vines. See the barrels in the cellar. Eat some cheese. Taste some wine. Lots of talking but often in the service of a familiar story. Belden Barns is something else. I’ve been following Belden Barns since first encountering…
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Recently we were invited to sit down with Arnaud Hereu, winemaker for the Chilean label Odfjell Vineyards, and taste some of their new releases over dinner. What a delight it was! Arnaud is as vivacious as his winemaking style. He’s traveled the wine world to get a hands-on oenology education, starting with his home turf…
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Joel Peterson of Ravenswood is legendary in the Bay Area wine scene. We were recently invited to tour the winery and certain vineyards close the Ravenswood team’s heart. We also dined on the vast patio space that they just opened up near the barrel room and tasting room. We drank Zinfandel while eating BBQ, listening…
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Master distillers get all the press, but their work is basically done before a whisky ever goes into the barrel. When it comes to putting out a finished product, the master blender rolls up his sleeves. In the case of Japan’s Suntory whisky operation, which spans three distilleries in the country, that task falls to…
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