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The small country of Georgia has been producing wine for 8,000 years, longer than anywhere else in the world, and they are now seeing a boom in popularity. Chris Livesay met with a winemaker who still uses generations-old techniques and natural fermentation.

The country of Georgia is widely recognized as the oldest winemaking region in the world; evidence of wine production in the country dates all the way back to 6000 B.C. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Georgia has over 500 different types of native grapes, many of which aren’t grown anywhere else in the world.

From the desert of Peru and sunny countryside of Texas to the sandy shores of Croatia and rolling green hills of Georgia, this list will help you get off the beaten path and try something new. Here are our top 10 wine destinations for 2023.

Georgian wine is best known for the qvevri clay pots used by some of its most celebrated producers. But the array of fascinating, utterly distinctive indigenous Georgian grape varieties also deserve much wider renown

Georgia, with its 8,000 years of winemaking history, arguably has a better handle on the issue of service temperature for orange wines than other wine-drinking cultures. That’s because many of its wines, including its qvevris—wines fermented and aged below ground in traditional enormous clay vessels known as qvevri—come with recommended cellar and service temperatures written on the back label. That’s especially true for qvevri amber wines, the preferred Georgian term for “orange” wines.

As the world’s oldest continuously producing wine region, one might expect Georgia to be more ubiquitous—but there’s a reason it still feels unknown. “The Republic was under Soviet rule for decades, and wine culture was greatly impacted. Only four grape varieties (out of over 500) were allowed in production; the others were kept alive in secret,” natural wine journalist and author Rachel Signer says. “With Georgia’s independence, they rediscovered their wine culture and began sharing it with the broader world.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s a reason orange wine is resonating with us, and it goes beyond the “it” factor. The drink is rooted in history, inspired by ancient winemaking techniques in Georgia. And those techniques, which often rely on minimal intervention, get you as close to “wine” as can be.

Though orange wine has seen an epic rise in popularity in recent years, there’s nothing new about this style of wine. Its origins are ancient — as in, it’s been produced for millennia. Archeological evidence shows that it was made as far back as 6000 B.C. in what is now the modern-day country of Georgia. Here, wines were made predominantly from the Rkatsiteli grape in clay vessels buried in the ground to keep temperatures lower. These vessels, known as qvevri, are traditionally lined and sealed with beeswax and stone lids. This tradition still defines much of Georgian winemaking today.

During the Soviet occupation of Georgia, the communists forced its growers to produce quantity rather than quality, and even under Gorbachev’s more paternalistic anti-alcohol directives, he cut the quantity but also the amounts exported to Russia. Since the mid-1990s, however, Georgia, with an 8,000 year-old history of viniculture, has increased its regional and international profile, now with 525 grape varieties grown on 55,000 hectares under cultivation and 1,100 wine companies licensed to sell commercially, with 93.4 million bottles exported to 53 countries for sales of $238 million.

There are more than 1,000 registered wine producers in Georgia. A majority of them are small, family-owned cellars like Chekura, located in the village of Shashiani in the Kakheti region of Eastern Georgia.

The playbook for opening a wine bar in San Francisco this summer, apparently: Choose a country that’s not particularly well known for making wine, and go deep. France and Italy are off the table. But Armenia, Mexico, Greece, Georgia – now we’re talking.

Wine comes in a range of colors, styles, and price points. If you’re ready to take a step away from Two Buck Chuck and fruity wine coolers, it can be intimidating to know where to start. Sure you could join a wine club, enlist a wine consultant, or ask for advice at your local wine shop, but it’s also totally manageable to tackle the task on your own – thanks to our comprehensive selection.