This is a method, not a map. Plenty of articles will hand you a list of regions to memorise — this one hands you the four moves that work on any of them, this year or in ten years’ time, because trying new wine regions was never really a geography test. It’s a taste test with better scenery. A wine region, put simply, is a place whose climate, soil and grape varieties shape how the wine in your glass turns out — some have been famous for centuries, others are only now catching the trade’s attention, and the honest secret of the whole subject is that the method for approaching them is identical. By the end you’ll know how to pick a first bottle from somewhere you’ve never tried, what to check before you hand over money for it, and how to pour it so it gets a fair hearing — no guesswork, and no guilt if it turns out not to be for you.
What is the new wine region?
There isn’t one single “new” region — it depends who you ask and what’s got the trade excited that particular year, which is exactly why a method beats memorising a list. Recent coverage has Greece pegged as the region to watch right now — Assyrtiko country, if you want the grape to anchor it to — but that sits alongside plenty of others that have been quietly making very good wine for decades without much attention outside their own borders.
New Zealand’s North Canterbury is a good example — apparently even trained Master of Wine students have forgotten it exists when reeling off the country’s regions, which tells you how invisible “quietly good” can be. Northland, further north, gets overlooked too, despite producers coaxing pleasing Chardonnay and savoury Syrah out of a genuinely humid climate that shouldn’t, on paper, suit either.
Australia has its own quiet corners. Adelaide Hills has become the country’s unlikely home for Austrian varieties, Grüner Veltliner especially, while Clare Valley’s Polish Hill River pocket is where you’ll find some of the country’s most structured Riesling. Up in the Italian Alps, Valle d’Aosta is holding onto Roussin de Morgex, a near-extinct grape being coaxed back from the brink in tiny volumes. South Africa belongs in this conversation too — a country where climate and geology vary so much region to region that matching grape and place to your own taste matters more than chasing a famous name.
I’ve drawn the longer map of corners like these in Beyond the classics: the wine map’s best-kept secrets if you want the scenery. This piece is about what to do the moment one of those names catches your eye on a shelf — because that’s where the map stops helping and the method starts.
How to try new wine?
One rule carries the whole method, and it’s worth pinning up: follow the grape, not the flag. Start from a grape or style you already trust, then follow it sideways into a region you don’t know. One bottle at a time — never a case, not at first.
- Pick the grape first, not the country — familiarity with the fruit gives you a foothold.
- Buy a single bottle until you know you like it, not a mixed case.
- Ask what it’s the “cousin” of stylistically — regions often echo more famous ones even when the label gives no clue.
- Actually read the back label before deciding — Reading a wine label: the five things that matter covers what’s worth your two seconds.
- Note what you liked, even scrawled on the receipt — it’s the fastest way to build your own map.
There’s a sixth move, borrowed from the restaurant trade, and it’s the one that turns a gamble into a recommendation: when a wine list carries several bottles from the same grower at different price points, it means whoever built the list genuinely believes in that grower. The same tell works in a shop. Ask what we’ve bought deepest into from an unfamiliar region — the answer says more than any medal sticker, because a merchant’s money follows a merchant’s conviction. It’s the single question I most wish customers would ask me.
Finding the familiar shape inside the unfamiliar label
Once you’ve got a grape you trust, the next skill is spotting how a region bends it. Tempranillo behaves quite differently depending on where it’s grown — in Ribera del Duero it’s often called Tinto Fino, and producers who’ve moved it between there and Rioja have learned the hard way that the two soils and climates don’t transfer easily. Same grape, genuinely different wine — and for you, that’s not a warning but an invitation: every grape you already love has cousins you haven’t met.
McLaren Vale does something similar with grapes usually associated with southern France — a native Languedoc white variety turns riper and more pear-like there than at home, and the region’s Grenache, often blended with Carignan or Tempranillo, leans fragrant and lifted rather than heavy. If you love Pinot Noir and fancy sounding like you know your way around a list, the Jura has become the trade’s favourite alternative to Burgundy or Oregon — though it’s a more rustic, sometimes oxidative style, so go in expecting a different animal, not a cheaper cousin.
Cabernet Sauvignon is the easiest bridge of all. Old World versions from Bordeaux can be tannin-heavy and a bit of a shock if you’re not used to it; New World Cabernet from somewhere like Mendoza in Argentina tends to be riper and smoother, which makes it the friendlier door into the grape before you go hunting structure elsewhere. If Cabernet is your grape, that Mendoza bottle is the single easiest first pick this whole article can offer — ask for it by grape and country and any decent merchant will do the rest.
Style travels the same way, and it pays to track it. If dry is what you’re after, plenty of newer regions deliver it without fanfare — Grüner Veltliner from Adelaide Hills, old-vine Chenin Blanc from Swan Valley, Chardonnay from Central Otago, all bone dry regardless of what you might assume about the grape. Riesling is the classic case of mistaken identity: German Riesling has a reputation for sweetness, but Clare Valley’s version, especially from Polish Hill River, is usually dry as a bone. Name the style you want out loud when you buy — “dry, and from somewhere I’ve not tried” is a complete, answerable brief.
Serving it so the wine gets a fair hearing
Getting a good bottle and serving it badly is the fastest way to write off a whole region unfairly. Aromatic whites — Gewürztraminer, Grüner Veltliner — actually show better with a few minutes out of the fridge; ice-cold mutes the floral, lychee-and-rose character that’s the whole point of drinking them.
Structured young reds, especially low-intervention or whole-bunch styles like some of Nelson’s more experimental Pinot Noir, benefit from air. Open the bottle half an hour before you pour, or just use a bigger glass and give it time in there. If a bottle throws a bit of sediment — not uncommon with unfined, unfiltered wine — that’s not a fault; stand it upright the day before so the grit settles. Give an unfamiliar bottle the same courtesy you’d give a familiar one, in other words — then judge it. A region deserves to be rejected on its wine, not on your fridge settings.
What a sensible first bottle costs — and why that matters
Buy to taste, not to impress anyone — that’s the money rule for unfamiliar regions, and it’s more liberating than it sounds. If the bottle isn’t for you, you’ve lost the price of one bottle, not a case; that arithmetic is the entire cost of an education in somewhere new. And in the shop, the bottles I hand over for exactly this purpose are almost never the dearest ones from a region. Mid-priced is where an unfamiliar place shows its everyday self honestly — the top of a region’s range tells you what it can do on a great day, the middle tells you what it does on a Tuesday, and the Tuesday answer is the one you’re actually buying for.
Availability varies more than price does, and it’s worth understanding why before you go hunting. Something like Valle d’Aosta’s Roussin de Morgex is made in genuinely tiny quantities, sold mostly close to the winery itself — no shop’s failure, just scarcity doing what scarcity does. The broader lists keep a running handful of newer regions precisely because customers keep asking, and a merchant who’s chosen each one deliberately can tell you why it earned its place — which is the real value you’re buying alongside the bottle. For more on how a shop decides what deserves shelf space, have a look at What an independent wine merchant does differently and How to buy wine like a merchant: labels, ratings and value.
Questions customers ask us
Which wine is best for diabetics? That’s a question for you and your doctor, not your wine merchant — no bottle should carry a health claim. What a merchant can help with is style, dry versus sweet, which is a matter of taste and the part I actually know.
Is it worth joining a wine club to try new wine regions? Only if it genuinely ships from unusual corners rather than discounting familiar names in fancier boxes. Ask to see a sample case list before signing up to anything ongoing.
Do I need to decant a wine from a region I’ve never tried? Not always — most whites don’t need it, but young, structured reds with real tannin usually benefit from some air before pouring.
Should I trust a medal or score on an unfamiliar label? Treat it as one data point, not the whole story. A merchant who’s actually tasted the bottle and can tell you why they bought it is worth more than a gold sticker.
The merchant’s last word
I’ve sold plenty of bottles from places nobody in the shop could point to on a map, and the ones that landed were always chosen by grape and mood, not by geography lesson. Trying new wine regions only goes wrong when the case arrives before the taste is proven — follow the grape, not the flag; buy the bottle, not the case; and make the merchant tell you why it’s on the shelf. When you’re ready, come and browse the France cellar — tell me the last bottle you loved and I’ll find you its unfamiliar cousin.
