Dry Season

With younger travelers drinking less, the world's top wine regions are leaning in to the other aspects that make them great. By Sarah Khan

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LAST AUTUMN at Sterrekopje Healing Farm, a regenerative farm and wellness retreat in South Africa's Cape Winelands, I wandered across damp fields, through calming gardens, and past a floating yoga pavilion tethered to a dam until I reached a Mongolian-style yurt. I had come for a breath work session, one of numerous wellness offerings available here, along with reflexology, Reiki, and hypnotherapy. As you might expect in this part of the world, wine is available, but there is also an apothecary brewing teas and tinctures with lemon verbena, sage, and wild mint from the gardens. “People enjoy the alternatives to alcohol so much,” cofounder Nicole Boekhoorn told me as we returned to the main house for a lunch of miso soup, sea bream with labneh, and rosemary bread from the adjacent bakery; the meal was paired with cordials in vivifying blends like passion fruit-marigold, lemon-buchu, and lavender-juniper. “Guests say, ‘I was coming here for wine, and I came with all these plans’—then they cancel them.”