The world's great grape trails

  Few other words are so synonymous with celebration and fun. The French region that gave us the world's most imitated, luxurious sparkling wine is about two hours' drive east of Paris and it makes a fascinating detour for the traveller.

  Of course, the wine is the thing for some of us and tours of the cellars in the main city of Reims are a must. They range in style from clubby, old-world charm to the Hollywood-meets-Disneyland experience of Piper-Heidsieck, where a little dodgem car takes you on a ride through subterranean cellars. A tour through the crayeres - the chalk underground cellars used for hundreds of years for storing the maturing wine - is recommended; Charles Heidsieck has great examples.

  Once you've made acquaintance with Champagne wine there are other sparkling experiences. Reims Cathedral is one of the most beautiful in Europe. Built between the 13th and 15th centuries, it was where French kings were crowned until the 1800s. The stained glass in the cathedral is spectacular.

  Just outside Reims is Fort de la Pompelle, on the front line from 1914 to 1918. It is now kept as a fascinating museum of the horrors and triumphs of that awful conflict.

Cape Town, South Africa

  The heart of South Africa's wine country is the town of Stellenbosch, about 50 kilometres east of Cape Town. Dating back to 1679, its long history has left a great legacy of historic buildings in the classic Cape Dutch style.

  The surrounding landscape makes this one of the most spectacular wine regions in the world, with craggy mountains as a backdrop to vineyards and bushland. Vineyards here are called "wine farms" and some, such as the historic Plaisir de Merle - a splendid whitewashed Cape Dutch complex at the foot of the majestic Simonsberg mountain - are as atmospheric as any in the world.

  Nearer to Cape Town, south of the city on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, is the source of South Africa's most famous wine, Constantia. This muscat dessert wine, a favourite of Napoleon, was as famous as the great growths of Europe in the late 18th century but the dreaded vine louse phylloxera decimated the area in the late 19th century. Today the winery known as Klein Constantia, now just beyond the edge of Cape Town's suburban sprawl, has been resurrected and the original sweet "Vin de Constance" is back.