Wine Regions: Wine Areas Around the World

Although many countries in the world manufacture wine, far fewer regions have the ideal conditions for growing and harvesting grapes. In general, the area between the 30th and 50th latitude in both the northern and southern hemisphere have the best climates for cultivating. Most of the world's grapes come from countries that fall within these parameters.




While the South Island of New Zealand (45° latitude) the wine region that is the furthest south in the world, Sweden houses the wine region that is the furthest north in the world in the city of Flen (59° latitude).



The reason that the cultivation takes place in a limited region is because areas outside of this vicinity are too hot or too cold to sustain 100 days of the ideal temperature that grapes need to grow. Ideal temperatures for grapes range from as low as 40°F or 23°C to as high as 95°F or 35°C.

Currently, the top ten wine producing regions in the world include (in order of most to least wine produced):

Because taste is subjective and everyone has a unique palate, determining which vineyards produce the best wine can be tricky, as wine that one person considers tasty may not appeal at all to another. However, in general, the terroir (general climate conditions) of a few vineyards around the world yield distinctly quality wines, making these wine regions generally accepted as the world's top winemakers.

Some of the areas included in this elite group are:

The manner in which wines are named depends on tradition, laws and marketing strategies. While the names of newer wines follow their own naming conventions, many of the wine regions that have been producing wine for years, namely European winemakers, tend to name their wines based on either the grape used or the region in which it is made, or some combination of the two.

In fact, many European wine making countries have treaties and laws dictating that regional identification of wine in the naming process can only strictly refer to wine that is made in those regions. This means that even if a wine is like wine produced in a specific area, it can't carry the regional name if it isn't, in fact, made there. For example, only wine produced in the Champagne or Bordeaux regions can be labeled as Champagne or Bordeaux wines.

Some of the more famous winemaking areas that restrict others from using their regional names include: