Wine is wonderful. Served with a meal at the end of a long day it can mellow the mood, liven up conversation and bring out the taste of the food it's served with. But wine has more to offer; the more attention you pay it, the more of itself it reveals.

The quality of a wine is determined by many factors: the grape, of course, but also the weather, the elevation, the composition of the soil (what wine-enthusiasts refer to as the terroir), the age of the vine and the wine itself, as well as the skill and preferences of the wine maker.

Wine tasting as a vacation focus is a growing segment of the travel industry, in no small part spurred on by the popularity of the 2004 film “Sideways”. Vineyards open up their tasting rooms to the public, who are allowed to sample a handful of wines for free in some smaller wine regions to upwards of $30 per tasting for top producers in Napa Valley. Many also offer special wine-tasting dinners, sometimes held right in the vineyard’s wine cellars.

Traditional hotspots for wine tasting are, of course, Napa and Sonoma counties in California, Bordeaux and Burgundy in France, and Chianti in Italy. However, in the last decade or two, vineyards around the world have begun to produce excellent wine and are now on the wine-tasting vacation circuit: Australia, Argentina, Chile and South Africa.