 Bangkok, Thailand is one of my favorite cities in the world. It's known for its steel and glass skyscrapers, crazy insane traffic and delicious street food. But little do visitors know it's actually only a few hours from an emerging wine region and I'm gonna tell you all about it in this video. The Thai Wine Association consists of six members and they invited me for their annual inspection tour. I was invited by Vissuth Lohitvani, the president of the Thai Wine Association and the owner of Grand Mante Vineyard and Estate. It was a two-hour ride from Bangkok to Khao Yai, where Grand Mante Estate is. My first taste of Thai grapes were here at Grand Mante Estate. We were about 300 meters in elevation. I was there during the dry season and one thing that immediately struck me is how dry it was and how cool it was. Walking the guesthouse for dinner. It's no joke. It gets cold here. I need a jacket. Why make her nicky told me a little bit more about the process? So the management is different in the vineyard. A lot more work and during the rainy season we still have to do a lot of canopy management to get plenty of sunlight on the buds for the next pruning and that's when we will have the grapes. You have to choose the right varieties and also the management in the vineyard is different too. So you have to prune the vines twice a year. If it's semi-arid then you can do two harvest a year or if it's sub-tropical you do one harvest or if it's tropical like us we prefer to do one harvest too. After arriving I did a tasting of the Grand Mante wines. This is the first time I had tasted most of the wines. I had tasted the rosé in the past and I have to say I was pretty impressed with the sparkling wines, what they're doing with Chenin Blanc, Viognier and Sera. As a matter of fact I took some of those wines and we put them in blind tastings and fooled a lot of sommeliers. We started the inspection tour in Grand Mante to see the health of the vines. The vines are coming along well. They are meticulously pruned. After that we went to J&J Vineyards and what Nicky and Visu told me is they took everything they learned about vine culture and practiced it in that vineyard and the vineyard was beautiful. It actually looked like it was somewhere in the south of France. Crazy we're in the vineyards of J&J. J&J family vineyards were a little bit higher up in elevation. I think it is dry. It's beautiful. It looks like a proper wine region. I'm really impressed. That J&J Vineyard is the source of one of my favorite wines that I tasted while I was on the trip, the gradient Sera by Grand Mante, made with whole clusters. After that we went to Village Farm and Winery and one thing that was shocking to me as we pulled in there was Terra Rosa, a lot of Terra Rosa which completely surprised me. We sat up and ate lunch overlooking some of the Terra Rosa vineyards which was lovely. I could eat coconut soup all day, every day. They have some old vines, some more than 30-40 years old. At night we went to the other property where they have a beautiful accommodation up high on the hills overlooking the plains of eastern Thailand. Beautiful property. We ate some lovely food and we opened some older and current vintages of Village Farm and I have to say some of the old vintages were very impressive. I think in the past there were no legislation about how much foreign wine you could blend into the Thai wine and I think there was actually quite a bit of foreign wine blended into it. It aged beautifully. The current vintages are obviously a little bit different since they're transitioning. They've changed winemakers and I'm really excited to see what they do in the future. It's another crisp morning here. Here in Thailand. Again I'm surprised that they weren't growing regions how cool they are at night in the morning. It was probably 17-18 degrees. It goes 5,000 baht. After that we went to Moonlight Valley. Moonlight Valley was a little bit lower in elevation and it was hot and humid exactly like expected the vineyards in Thailand would be. We're lower elevation. It's going to be tough here. Hot, humid. Vines are not doing so great. It's going to be tough. The owner said he's struggling with some of the vines but he doesn't want to give up. We sat down and had lunch and tasted some of the wines. Actually one wine I was very impressed with was the Cullombard from Moonlight Valley. It was crisp, clean, easy to drink, high in acidity and I think it was really well made and I think it could fool a lot of people blind. After that we went down to the coast to the infamous resort town of Petia. Here we visited Silver Lake Winery and it's just a beautiful property. The owners have studied wineries and Napa Barossa to learn all about Ena tourism, how to give guests a fantastic experience. It's really an insane beautiful property. They make a lot of their wines using imported grape must from Australia. It's clearly stated in the label although they do have some estate wines. Obviously the vineyards there were also very humid. They say that they have most success obviously with the grape must they buy from Australia. So overall when I started I was a little bit skeptical of how they do tropical viticulture in Thailand but I was impressed with some of the wines they tasted. Really. Some people ask why are you even trying to make wine in such a hot and humid climate? You know what? The producers are having lots of fun trying. They're learning, experimenting and you know what? If they're having fun I think that's what wine's all about. You can check out my article in the description box where I go into some of the tasting notes and the details a little bit more and guys if you like this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.