Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Rhineland-Palatinate is the wine country and it has the two most genuinely beautiful river valleys in the country — the Mosel winding between vineyards so steep they can only be worked by hand, and the Rhine gorge with the castles on the cliffs above and the Loreley rock in the middle. Trier is the oldest city in the country with the Roman gate and baths that are genuinely two thousand years old, Mainz is the state capital on the Rhine with the cathedral and the carnival tradition, Koblenz is where the two rivers meet at the German Corner, and Cochem is the small Mosel town with the castle on the hill that appears in every calendar.

The state's character is wine, Catholic and provincial, with a genuinely Roman history underneath the vineyards and a real Riesling culture that has been the region's identity for centuries. The villages have wine festivals in every month of the season and the whole social life runs on the harvest.

Expect real wine talk, genuine river-valley beauty, and a state where the Romans built the infrastructure two thousand years before there was a wine industry to use it.

Nearby: Hesse Cologne Frankfurt Saarland