If you love wine and love to travel, you can find a vast array of places around the world to take an affordable wine vacation. You can explore vineyards, take a bike tour through wine country, and have the opportunity to visit outstanding and luxurious tasting rooms and taste dozens of artisan wines on a budget. If you are considering taking a relaxing wine vacation, here are the five most affordable wine travel destinations.

1. Finger Lakes, New York: Situated in the Western portion of New York, the Fingers Lakes Wine Country provides free wine tastings throughout the year. While on vacation, you can also visit the Canandaigua Lake Wine Trail. This wine growing area consists of many boutique wineries, restaurants, tourist shops and a wine tasting center. You can find a slew of affordable hotels, inns or bed and breakfasts that provide the beautiful scenery of wine country.

2. Tuscany, Italy: Tuscany is one of the premiere wine vacation destinations in the world. The region is located in driving distance from Florence and offers scenic vineyards, charming wineries, historic villas, and gorgeous countryside landscapes. You can opt to take a value-priced organized wine tour or visit wineries on your own by appointment. Tuscan food and wine is outstanding, and you can experience some of the best cuisine Italy has to offer at small family owned restaurants that dot the Tuscan countryside.

3. Napa Valley, California: Napa Valley is one of the most celebrated pioneers of modern wine tourism the world over, and is a great starting point for exploring California’s most acclaimed wineries. Free or relatively inexpensive wine tastings are offered at many winery tasting rooms along with artisanal cheese pairings. Located north of San Francisco, Napa is a great weekend side trip if you’re visiting the Bay Area.

4. Cape Winelands, South Africa: Located east of Cape Town, the Winelands are situated among gorgeous mountains and stunning scenery. You can visit the towns of Stellenbosch, Wellington, Paarl and Franschhoek and taste fabulous wines made of the local Pinotage grape or other international varieties. The area is home to many charming bed and breakfasts, as well as adventurous safari side trips.

5. Columbia Valley, Washington: You can easily visit the Columbia Valley, one of Washington’s most critically acclaimed viticultural areas, and not break the bank. Home to some of the best red wines in North America, Washington wine country is still a bit under the radar which means you’ll find great deals at local hotels, restaurants, and winery tasting rooms.

Any casual drinker can grab a bottle of wine at a local grocer. However, for those who have more reverence for the grape and its fermented gifts, those interested in becoming connoisseurs or those simply curious about the mystique of wine culture, an online wine club offers many benefits.

Benefit #1: Value
While online customers must beware of how shipping costs inflate wine purchases, many customers can reap discounts by joining monthly wine clubs, “best of” wine clubs or buying online by the case. Buying in volume is often rewarded with discounted shipping or free wine accessories. Most wine clubs offer occasional coupon codes or referral programs to further shave off the cost of wine. While premium and rare bottles rarely get discounted, each club typically has a section of budget-friendly recommendations to stay competitive. On top of that, by not going to the store, members save on time and the cost of gas.

Benefit #2: Diverse Selection
With direct supply lines to vineyards all over the world, the best online wine clubs go beyond just offering stateside wines from only one single winery, and instead offer a broad global selection from venerable wine countries such as Italy, Argentina, Chile, France, South Africa and New Zealand.

Benefit #3: Perks
The best online wine clubs lavish regular members with a wide variety of perks and freebies, including wine glasses, wine magazine subscriptions, corkscrew sets and wine books. In addition to that, members have access to limited release wines that are not offered to the general public. A few clubs offer a free bottle or two for longstanding members.

Benefit #4: Wine Education
Don’t know a medium-bodied wine from a light and fruity one? Confused about which wine is dry or should be served with a filet mignon? With tasting notes, newsletters and pamphlets included in nearly every shipment, online wine clubs offer easy instruction on how to pair wines with food and discern the characteristics of particular wines. Overtime, any member can easily rattle off wine styles, regions and varietals with ease. They also learn the basics of winemaking, including both viticulture and vinification.

Benefit #5: Guided Purchases
Buying wine can be intimidating, which is why many members enjoy the hand selection of their wines by managers of wine clubs. Think of an online wine club as your own special curator, able to pick and choose a perfect bottle set for whatever occasion. A club might introduce you to a red wine trio one month, a sweet wine set the next month and an assortment of champagne thereafter. It might use three months to take you on a gustatory tour of all the great Tuscan wines and then shift to Napa Valley’s best after that.

Quite simply, wine clubs are extremely convenient, delivering wines right to your front door on a fixed schedule. There’s a club for every lifestyle. Some ship every three months, while others ship every month. Some sites offer a single bottle via a wine of the month club, while others send bottles by the dozen. Most do not charge membership fees and allow cancellation at any time.

Do you have a hard time deciphering fancy wine geek lingo? Ever wonder what in the world a sommelier means when he/she uses words like minerality, muscularity, or high-toned to describe a wine? If you struggle with vino vocab, then check out this new video I recorded for the Menusim Blog which will equip you with some great wine geek speak!

Click here to listen to Plonk Wine Merchants on the radio show: The Tasting Room with Tom Leykis!

Do you get overwhelmed by massive wine lists? Need help choosing wines when you go out to restaurants or wine bars? Watch my video on the Menuism Blog for tips on how to navigate wine lists like a pro!

I was tasting through some very elegant and interesting California wines yesterday and found myself deep in discussion about what gives a wine its structure. Think of structure as a wine’s frame or backbone-the architecture that holds all of a wine’s components together. This is a somewhat esoteric topic, but in my eyes, structure in wine is almost always derived from two main components: acid and tannins.

Acidity gives wine its shape, making it piercing, taut, and linear, if the acidity is high, or flabby, blousy, and broad if the acidity is lower. Tannins on the other hand, contribute to a wine’s structure in more of a textural sense. Wines that are high in tannin will give the impression of dryness, causing that velvety friction on your gums and on the insides of your cheeks. Wines that are low in tannins, on the other hand, will appear soft and round in the mouth-again a nod to texture.

The best wines out there strike the perfect balance between acid structure and tannin structure, which together contribute to a wine’s overall mouthfeel.

Watch this video below to see a perfect example of a wine that demonstrates what I mean by acid structure.

And watch this video below to see tannin structure in action.

How do you know if your wine has gone bad? Wondering how to tell if your wine is corked? Check out my recent video for the Menuism Blog which provides a quick rundown on the most common wine flaws!