Umberto Cosmo, co-owner and co-founder of Bellenda wines, describes himself as a perpetual, restless traveler. As a wine enthusiast and successful entrepreneur, he is curious, inquisitive, and adventurous—willing to take risks and try new ideas.
09.11.2023 - 09:59 / nationalgeographic.com
When it comes to wine, snifter-sized Moldova packs a barrel-sized punch. Sandwiched between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea on the eastern edge of Europe, this is a country with an ancient winemaking tradition that’s experienced a recent boom in independent wineries offering vineyard tours, wine tastings, excellent restaurants and unique accommodation. Moldova's wines are becoming increasingly well recognised internationally, with a local vintage winning Best Red Wine at Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles 2022. See the world’s largest collection of wine, sleep in a wine barrel and sip your way through the many wine varieties on offer in Moldova’s three winemaking regions — Codru, Valul lui Traian and Ștefan Vodă.
The largest of Moldova’s wine regions, Codru forms a belt across the midriff of the country and is known for producing wonderfully fresh and floral white wines, including chardonnays, rieslings and sauvignon blancs. The temperate climate, the rolling countryside and the limestone-rich terroir draws favourable comparisons with Burgundy in France. For visitors, there are vineyard tours and wine-tasting experiences aplenty — but there are also ways to have more up-close-and-personal encounters with the local produce.
At Asconi Winery, an overnight stay means sleeping in a traditional, thatched-roof cottage and having your own garden-sized vineyard to tend to. Meanwhile, at Milesti Mici, there’s a chance to explore the largest wine collection in the world — descend into a 125-mile-long labyrinth of tunnels hewn from the limestone rock to discover two million bottles (and counting) stacked from floor to ceiling.
The Codru region is also home to the culture-crammed capital Chişinău, which has museums, monuments and sprawling parks and botanical gardens, as well as a thriving food scene. Each year in the first weekend of October, Chişinău hosts National Wine Day celebrations, with wine tastings, masterclasses, craft workshops and an artistic programme featuring various local performers.
Encompassing the southern reaches of Moldova, the Valul lui Traian wine region is mostly about big, bold and fruity red wines — from merlots and malbecs to local fetească neagrăs — although white wines like muscats, as well as sparkling whites and rosés, are also produced there. All the grape varieties in the region benefit from the rich black soil and high temperatures, offset by shade from the Tigheci Forests and winds from the Black Sea.
Discover the countryside by bike on the newly created Southern Moldova cycling routes, stopping along the way to enjoy the many wine experiences on offer. The cycling routes connect some of the region’s most respected wineries and orchards with some of its greatest natural
Umberto Cosmo, co-owner and co-founder of Bellenda wines, describes himself as a perpetual, restless traveler. As a wine enthusiast and successful entrepreneur, he is curious, inquisitive, and adventurous—willing to take risks and try new ideas.
The French Senate has greenlit measures to apply value-added tax (VAT) to Airbnb and similar platforms, aiming to address perceived competition imbalances with the hotel sector.
In August 1944, the coastal Breton city of Saint-Malo was nearly wiped off the map. The opening scene of the Netflix limited series All the Light We Cannot See conjures the ferocity of the battle: an American squadron traverses the English Channel in darkness, dodges anti-aircraft fire, then releases its bombs on the Nazi-occupied French port.
Give your customers a trip to the greek tradition, in a place that has left the most powerful “footprint” in the course of Greek history at Missolonghi. The Holy City of Mesolongi, as declared in 1837, a benchmark in the culinary tradition with tastes from high quality materials with the most varied fish production center of Greece, the lagoon, formed between the delta of the rivers Acheloos and Evinos.
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AT invites winter sports enthusiasts to experience the highest point of comfort and convenience. It has adopted the principle of providing a smooth and enjoyable transfer to passengers who want to go from the airport to popular ski spots with the first-class vehicle fleets and professional drivers of the most reliable local solution partners in different parts of the world.
The European Young Chef Award 2023 programme will conclude on 23 November with a visit to the Hauts-de-France region to discover the local gastronomy and producers, including Fromagerie des Freres Bernard in Wierre Effroy, and Brasserie des 2 Caps at the Ferme de Belle Dalle in Tardinghen.
While the Caribbean is teeming with picturesque islands, few destinations can match the beauty of Puerto Rico. From the scenic shores of Rincon to the bioluminescent waters of Fajardo, this dazzling island has earned worldwide acclaim for its lush landscapes and pristine beaches—and as an added bonus, all of this abundant natural beauty has ushered in a wealth of world-class accommodations over the years, with the Condado Vanderbilt serving as one of the most lavish hotels to grace the grounds of San Juan.
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As far away from everywhere else as it gets, New Zealand is a dream destination for anyone with a case of wanderlust.
There’s a line in the poem Goodman’s Bay by the Bahamian poet Christian Campbell that reads, ‘God, there is too much red in the sky!’ I consider the line beautifully dramatic until I stand on the shore at dusk in Basse-Terre and find it apt. My unfamiliarity with the immensity of sky and sea on a tropical island in the Western Hemisphere makes everything seem unreal — every colour more intense, every horizon more distant. This aura of the surreal makes my arrival in Guadeloupe feel like it belongs to both fiction and reality, a liminal universe not unlike my writing, which questions the world by seeking to reimagine it from the perspective of suppressed cultures — the inverse of what we’ve come to accept as official history. It’s wondering writing, it’s wandering points of view.
JA Resorts & Hotels brings a sprinkle of festive magic to Dubai this season, with a series of events and activities across its portfolio from flagship destination, JA The Resort, to JA Ocean View Hotel on the iconic Jumeirah Beach Residence and Dubai’s only mountain resort, JA Hatta Fort Hotel. The Greatest Show at JA The Resort