Up above Freedom Square where the Sololaki and Mtatsminda neighborhoods blend together, there is a 100-year-old building with an apartment five steps below the sidewalk. It’s a warm, intimate space, part living room, part museum. A massive collection of wine glasses hang from the ceiling, 19th-century framed portraits of Georgians decorate one wall above a piano, while opposite are glass cases displaying antique ceramic pitchers and elegant, polished drinking horns called kantsi. There are also two vintage silver vessels – exquisite ashtray-sized pans with long stylized handles used in days of old for drinking wine to special toasts. This cup is called an azarphesha, and this entire collection (and the walls containing it) belong to Luarsab Togonidze, a folklorist, author, entrepreneur and co-owner of this welcoming restaurant, also called Azarphesha.

You don’t have to look far to find a glass of wine in Lisbon. But a unique glass of wine – perhaps something made by a small producer, or a bottle from an obscure region – in a comfortable or perhaps even trendy atmosphere, poured by someone who can explain what you’re drinking? That’s where it gets tough. But Lisbon can deliver. In recent years, the city has seen an explosion of wine bars. If we broaden the term, these could include restaurants with forward-thinking wine lists such as Insaciável, Senhor Uva, Tati and Sem. But we wanted to focus on venues that, in our opinion at least, prioritize bottles and glasses over plates.

Head due north from Portugal, and you’ll encounter Asturias, a region of Spain with a deep tradition of producing and drinking cider. Shift just east from there, and Spain’s Basque country has its own unique apple-based drink, known as sagardoa. And of course, France’s Atlantic coast has a longstanding, sophisticated tradition of turning apples and pears into alcohol. Back in Portugal, craft cider is, well, a lot harder to find. In recent years, commercial brands such as Bandida do Pomar – part of the company that produces Sagres beer and other products – have become common, but the drink is almost a novelty.

Denassus can be found in a narrow space on Blai Street in Barcelona’s Poble Sec neighborhood. Here, the bar occupies nearly half the room, with little tables lining the other side. Upon entry, we are greeted by the jubilant god of wine himself: the giant face of Bacchus, covered in grapes, looks down on us from the wall above. He presides over the scene: a warm, relaxed atmosphere in which to enjoy natural wines and thoughtful dishes. It’s not easy to find a place that blends quality and fair prices, tradition and modernity, identity and open vision, all into one easy-going style. Denassus has this touch.

We are on the eighth floor terrace of a relatively new apartment building in the Vedzisi neighborhood, nodding our heads with joker grins like gawkers at a freak show. The view is as spectacular as they come in mountainy Tbilisi, but that’s not what we’re chuckling at. There are 43 ceramic urns – kvevri – buried almost a meter and a half into a bed of sand and perlite in what was supposed to be a swimming pool for a nine-year-old boy. But in an epiphanic moment, the child’s father, 43-year-old doctor, Zura Natroshvili, decided to build a marani in the sky instead. The father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy, once said, “The best ideas come as jokes.” Dr. Natroshvili would probably agree. His friends thought he needed psychiatric help when he first shared his idea.

Happiness comes in all forms, but according to Aristotle’s scale there are four distinct levels to this particular emotion – say, for example, waking up to a glorious sunny day (laetus), getting a special discount from your local green grocer (felix) or watching your dog do its business in a sinister neighbor’s yard (beatitudo). Looking out the window, the snow-capped Caucasus along the horizon on this bright day, our eyes scan the city and settle over our own neighborhood of Vera, below. We sigh a sensual “yes” and nod smugly with our arms crossed because now there is a place in the hood where we can experience each of Aristotle’s levels of happiness in one splendid sitting.

A small group of sommeliers, oenophiles, and at least one intrepid food and beverage writer are gathered outside Grape Wine Boutique in Istanbul’s Teşvikiye neighborhood. More than once does a passing car feel the need to honk as the crowd, tasting glasses in hand, spills into the narrow street from the even more narrow sidewalk. As the first cork is pulled, a nervous energy spreads among the group.  We’ve gathered to taste the first official vintage of Mesashuna Wines, the only licensed winery in Turkey’s northeastern Artvin province, a rugged region not far from the border with Georgia.

“Lobio saved Georgia in the nineties,” quips Aleko Sardanashvili as he plonks a round clay pot of the simmering red bean stew in the middle of a loaded table of food. It groans under the weight of an assortment of Georgian feasting staples - khachapuri, lobiani, tomato and cucumber salad, sauteed potatoes garnished with greens, jonjoli salad, pickled chilies, fried chicken, tkemali plum sauce and more. We’re at Aleko’s marani (or wine cellar) in Racha – one of Georgia’s most sparsely populated regions, located in its northwestern frontier. It used to be a six-hour long circuitous route by car to get here from Tbilisi until a spanking new road launched last year cut travel time to Racha by 1.5 hours. Since then, visitor numbers have sharply increased to Georgia’s smallest wine region, a place that offers the ability to dip into family wineries in vineyards slung along the slopes of its lower valleys and drive up to high ridges for magnificent views of the snowcapped peaks of the Greater Caucasus massif, all in one afternoon – although the reverse order is more advisable, for obvious reasons.

Le Mistral, as the strong northwesterly wind is known here in Marseille, returned on a recent September day for the first time in a long while. It is an indicator of the change of seasons and that autumn is upon us. A driving wind that blows directly down the Rhone Valley to the Mediterranean, it averages 30-50 miles per hour. Le Mistral is so celebrated that for 30 years, Marseille has held La Fête du Vent (The Wind Festival) and ironically, it coincides today with its return. It is also the reason that we enjoy 300 days per year of luminous, sunny skies. The wind is said to bring good health, and one reason for good wine, because it clears the vines and dries the soil.

Despite its name, Tabernáculo by Hernâni Miguel is not a church. It is a sanctuary and haven of sorts, though, a place where the local community gathers weekly for African and Portuguese food, wine and live music. Ministering to this congregation is Hernâni Miguel himself, one of the vibrant Bica neighborhood’s best-known characters. “Estás boa?” Miguel asks passersby on Rua de São Paulo as they pass his place. And “viva!” is the jovial response Miguel exchanges with old and new patrons who enter through the purple, crushed velvet curtains of Tabernáculo. The architecture of the restaurant reveals Roman-style archways and a 15th-century cave that doubled as a wine cellar in times past and which inspired the place’s name (Tabernáculo means tabernacle in Portuguese).

Gabriel Oktay Cili is a man of many talents. When we visited him on a winter day in January, he had a crowd of visitors packed into his tiny, tunnel-like shop on the main tourist drag in old Mardin, near the Syrian border with Turkey. Each had a cup of cardamom-laced Assyrian coffee or tea in hand and each was waiting for Gabriel to attend to them. For a half hour, he sold silver jewelry to one couple visiting the city and pierced the lip of a woman who worked in a restaurant down the street. He fixed the gold necklace of another with an ancient blowtorch and fitted a young man for a custom silver bracelet.