I was drawn to wine because I was looking for cheap flights around the world.

I love that in a $20 bottle of Chablis I can taste limestone and minerals from northern Burgundy. I have never been to Spain, but I've gulped Rioja till 4AM at a West Village tapas bar and paid for it dearly with mad, mad hangovers the next day (and night). I tasted Malagousia long before my toes touched Greek soil. And I was so charmed by Umbria's Sagrantino di Montefalco and Tuscany's Vin Santo that I spent a summer working on a Tuscan farm and studied the Italian language for six months when I returned home.

Wine has been my compass, language teacher, and soul mate. It's a political statement (remember 2003, when Americans poured French wine down their drains?), and a geography lesson - did you know that India, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Malta and so many other unlikely faraway places produce wine? I didn't.

I can't say that I'm dying to go to Lebanon, but I'll never turn down a glass of Lebanon's Chateau Musar. The concept of terroir, the now overused French term for geographical authenticity, is exactly what you get in a beautiful glass of wine. Maybe the best things in life aren't free... but they certainly need not be outrageously expensive.