The Fine Art of Shopping Carte

Vintage French maps from Louis Larmat are a beautiful way to learn wine regions

- JAMES MOLESWORTH

From glassware, decanters, corkscrews and more, wine lovers appreciate all sorts of accoutrements that enhance the experience of drinking wine. But if you want to gift a wine person something that enhances the visual and intellectual aspects of drinking wine beyond just the hedonistic, nothing beats a good map.

Wine country maps can enhance any room, providing a dramatic display of a region’s or an appellation’s boundaries and topography that adds to the overall sense of a wine’s place of origin. And while modern wine maps can be sharply and exactingly detailed, I lean toward older versions. The antique maps of Louis Larmat are my choice for meaningful wine art.