First things first: Will there be another Napa? “Sorry to disappoint you,” says Chris Alheit, a top-end South African winemaker with a loyal following, “But I don’t think there will be any more Napas.” This is not, he stresses, because there aren’t other emerging wine regions worth getting excited about — but because it’s hard to replicate the factors that led to Napa’s inexorable rise in the 1980s and ‘90s. “For there to be another Napa,” Alheit explains, “We’d need another surging economy with a huge interest in local produce.”

But there is one big contender …

If there is going to be another Napa, Alheit reckons it’s most likely to emerge in China, where the wine market is expected to hit $18 billion next year. Not only has the rapidly expanding Chinese middle class developed a taste for finer wine, but the country has a long history of grape-growing and wine production, so there’s something to build on. The most exciting wine region in China, according to leading U.K. wine critic Tim Atkin MW, is Ningxia — a high-altitude region where vines are buried underground to ensure they survive the harsh winters. While many of Ningxia’s best wines are made from familiar grapes like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, the region is also betting on Marselan, a French grape developed just 60 years ago.

But it isn’t just the domestic market that Ningxia’s winemakers are targeting. The region’s wine exports shot up by 256% in 2021. Ningxia’s vineyards, which Chinese President Xi Jinping visited in 2020, are at the heart of Beijing’s efforts to increase the country’s wine production eight-fold by 2035. It isn’t just government support that’s driving growth in Ningxia, though. Experts credit an adventurous spirit among the region’s private winemakers, who have also turned to sustainable, biodynamic farming. The world is noticing: In June, Chinese wines had their most successful outing yet at the influential Decanter World Wine Awards.

Climate change, says Atkin, “is the single biggest game changer facing the wine world.” Warmer climates and less water will lead some regions to pull up vines in favor of other crops. But there are also likely to be quite a few beneficiaries. One way to adapt to climate change, Atkin explains, “is to grow grapes at higher altitude, where it’s cooler and you don’t generally need to irrigate as much.” Ningxia certainly fits this bill. But so too do sky-high Uspallata in Argentina and Chile’s Viñedos de Alcohuaz on the other side of the Andes.

Another region that excites Atkin is Galicia in Spain, which traditionally received “almost too much rain” but is now picking grapes two weeks earlier. “Galician reds are now ripe on a regular basis, instead of only one year in five,” says Atkin. And if you’re after a truly left-field pick, he adds, keep an eye out for wines from Rogge Cloof in a cold corner of the South African interior that’s more famous for its telescopes than its wines.

The other way of contending with climate change is to plant wines further north. Both Atkin and Alheit offer multiple examples of places doing this. Among them is the south of England. “There’s already great enthusiasm for English bubbly,” says Alheit, “And if current climate trends continue, England could be producing some serious dry wines in the next 30 years or so.” Other Northern Hemisphere regions on Alheit’s radar include the Willamette Valley in Oregon (specifically the Van Duzer Corridor) and Canada’s Okanagan Valley.

Atkin, meanwhile, is most excited about Southern Hemisphere wines on the fringes of current hotspots. “In the past Uruguay was considered marginal,” he explains. “But now their Tannat [the nation’s flagship red] is good much more often than not.” If he had to pick a particular region of Uruguay, he’d go with Maldonado on the Atlantic coast. The other area that could really benefit from climate change, according to Atkin, is Patagonia — on both the Chilean and Argentine sides of the Andes. “It’s cold enough, wet enough and land is cheap enough,” he says. “The only problem is frost risk, but there are ways around that.” (And climate change might reduce the number of frosty nights.)