Why I Always Choose My Next Trip by What’s on the Plate (and in the Glass)

I’ve made peace with the fact that I plan holidays differently to most people. While friends are scrolling through beach photos or comparing flight prices, I’m usually three tabs deep into a region’s grape varieties or googling what’s actually in season at a particular market in October. Call it a professional hazard of being a travel writer with a serious soft spot for food, but I genuinely believe the tastiest way to plan a trip is to let the food and wine culture pick the destination for you, not the other way around.

Here’s the thing: almost every unforgettable meal I’ve had abroad wasn’t an accident. It happened because I was somewhere that takes its food and wine seriously enough to build an entire culture around it, generations of it, in fact. When a region has spent centuries perfecting a grape variety or a regional dish, you feel it the moment you sit down at the table. So if you’re planning your next trip and want it to be genuinely memorable, here are two destinations I’d point you toward without hesitation.

Italy: Where The Wine Regions Are Destinations In Their Own Right

I’ll be honest, I could write an entire article on Italy’s food and wine culture and still barely scratch the surface. With an estimated 2,000 varieties of wine grapes growing across the country (yes, really, 2,000), Italy isn’t really a single wine destination so much as a collection of dozens of them, each with its own personality, grape varieties, and centuries of tradition behind it.

Here’s what I love most: you can build a whole holiday around a single region and never once feel like you’re missing out on the “main event”. Head to Piedmont in the north-west and you’ll find yourself among the rolling, fog-draped hills that gave Nebbiolo its name (it translates to “little fog”), producing the Barolo and Barbaresco wines that serious oenophiles talk about in hushed, reverent tones. Prefer somewhere with a bit more drama? Sicily’s volcanic soils, warmed by Mount Etna, produce wines that taste like nowhere else on earth, layered with a history that runs through Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Byzantine hands. Then there’s Tuscany, which somehow manages to combine rolling Chianti vineyards, Renaissance art, and some of the best food in the country into one deeply satisfying package.

The trick is not to treat any of this as a box-ticking day trip. A wine region deserves proper time; time to actually stay among the vines, wake up to the same view the winemakers do, and let a region reveal itself slowly over several days rather than a rushed afternoon. This is exactly why I’d point anyone serious about Italian wine toward SmoothRed’s Italy wine vacations, which are built around proper stays in the country’s key wine regions rather than a quick coach trip and a tasting glass. Whether you fancy a self-drive holiday winding through Tuscany’s back roads at your own pace, or a guided trip that takes the planning off your hands entirely, it means you actually get to live inside a wine region for a while, exploring its towns, its food, and its cellar doors properly, rather than seeing it through a bus window.

One tip if you do go down this route: don’t try to cram more than two wine regions into a single Italian trip, no matter how tempting the map looks. Italy’s regions are so distinct from one another, in grape variety, in food, in landscape, that hopping between three or four in a week just leaves you with a blur of vineyards rather than any real sense of place. Pick one, maybe two if they’re close together, and give yourself the time to actually taste the difference between a wine grown on a foggy Piedmont hillside and one grown on Sicily’s volcanic slopes.

Santorini: Volcanic Wine With A View You Won’t Forget

If Italy is about depth and variety, Santorini is about drama. I’ll never forget the first time I tasted Assyrtiko, the crisp, mineral-driven white wine that’s practically synonymous with the island, while looking out over the caldera at sunset. The wine itself is remarkable enough on its own merits: the vines here are trained into low, basket-like coils close to the ground to protect them from the relentless wind, and they grow in volcanic ash rather than soil, which gives the wine a distinctly smoky, saline character you won’t find anywhere else. But tasting it with that view in front of you is the sort of thing that ruins you for wine tastings back home.

What makes Santorini such a brilliant food and wine destination is how compact and dramatic the whole island is. You can genuinely taste your way around it in a matter of days: fresh-caught fish and fava (the island’s famous split-pea puree) in a taverna overlooking the sea, then a winery tour an hour later that has you swapping your sandals for something sturdier as you walk between rows of centuries-old vines. I’d always recommend booking with people who actually know the island rather than trying to piece it together yourself, and VIP Santorini’s private tours are ideal for this. Their wine-focused itineraries take in some of the island’s most respected wineries, Argyros, Karamolegos and Venetsanos among them, with a knowledgeable local driver-guide on hand who’ll happily point you toward the tavernas the cruise crowds never find, all while you’re travelling in proper comfort rather than crammed onto a group coach.

Let Your Tastebuds Do The Planning

Whichever direction you lean, Italy’s rolling wine regions or Santorini’s dramatic volcanic vineyards, the principle is the same: a destination’s food and wine culture tells you almost everything you need to know about its history, its landscape and its people. Plan your next trip around what you’ll be eating and drinking, not just what you’ll be photographing, and I promise you’ll come home with stories that go a lot deeper than “the view was nice”.

Buon appetito, and bon voyage.

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