Wine Atlas

Hugn Johnson was writing a student essay at Cambridge when a drunken roommate returned from a black-tie dinner with two glasses of burgundy in hand. The wines were produced in the same vintage from adjacent vineyards, but even to Johnson's unformed palate they tasted very different. It was, he says, a moment of revelation that aroused his curiosity about a subject 'with an infinity of variables'.

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CHANGLI, China The town of Changli, in Hebei Province, resembles any other nondescript county seat in northern China. Motorized pedicabs, bicycles and overloaded trucks ply past the massage parlors, cheap restaurants and tax administration high-rises that line its dusty main street.

But just outside the town center is a 200-hectare, or 500-acre, vineyard replete with a state-of-the-art wine production facility; a villa with tasting rooms and restaurants; a three-story wine school; a luxury hotel, and an immense private château. The Tuscan-style complex is so opulent and incongruous in the Hebei countryside that it at first seems like a mirage.

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If you're looking for the perfect wine-related holiday present, consider a grand tour of the world's vineyards -- in a box.

There has never been a better time to give the gift of global wine, as we were reminded recently when talking with Roger Esser, manager of Cyclone Liquors in Ames, Iowa. Just five years ago, he says, his store's shelves were pretty much stocked with wines from the United States and big names like Italy and France. But then, Mr. Esser says, he noticed a dramatic transformation. Wines started coming into the States from emerging wine regions from all around the world. Cyclone underwent a major reorganization then to showcase the wines -- and has undergone two or three more as wines from other regions have become available. Now there are separate areas labeled Greece, Austria, Hungary, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa. The Spain section has ballooned. "We have a lot of people who come in with an open mind and want to try something new," Mr. Esser explained. "A lot of people have become hooked on gruner veltliner, for example." These wines, he added, "are value-priced, too."

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