Where Should You Travel Next--Wine Lovers, Skiers, Treasure Hunters

Napa Valley, California

The region that put American wine on the map has a lot new going on. Forget mansion-size tasting rooms; there’s a crop of intimate places from small lot producers like Tom Garrett’s Dakota Shy and Favia Wines (from Screaming Eagle’s Andy Erick-son and his wife, Annie Favia). Casual dining is better than ever, with newcomers like Charter Oak, a shrine to open-fire cooking.

Park City, Utah

© Dan Campbell Photography

There are few ski areas in North America where a morning flight can have you floating on dry champagne powder by early afternoon. That accessibility has long made Park City a favorite winter playground. Auberge Resorts’ Lodge at Blue Sky, on a3,500-acre ranch, will bring the mountains even closer: A helicopter can pick you up at the airport and have you skiing on untouched terrain before check-in. The 46-suite lodge debuts in May, and it will have daylong “teaser” heli-ski packages, which include meals in a fire-warmed yurt. Once open, it will have signature Auberge service and warm and cold weather activities (for kids, too) and a range of lodgings. Our favorite: the 500-square-foot tents. Park City’s High West Distillery already has a tasting room and restaurant on-site, so you can toast your achievements.

Panama

The islands in the Gulf of Chiriquí, 20 miles off Panama’s Pacific coast, have always been a bit of a secret, sparsely inhabited for centuries, if at all. The difference now? Brand new, high-end lodges committed to preserving the area’s unspoiled environment. Isla Palenque (of the Cayuga Collection brand) opened last July with eight casitas and a beach front villa estate on 400 acres of protected jungle. Its organic garden dictates the restaurant’s menu, lunch is sustainably caught by fishermen in nearby Boca Chica,and the island’s seven beaches mean you never have to share a patch of sand. In January the sustainable luxury bar gets raised further still with the opening of Islas Secas Reserve & Lodge, on the archipelago’s Jurassic-esque Isla Cavada. The property sleeps just 18 in nine tucked-away wooden villas, and everything has been engineered to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible: Ocean breezes do the cooling, water is treated, the sun powers everything. Divers and snorkelers can explore a wonderland of some 750 species of fish in the surrounding sea, and there are private marine safaris and deserted island excursions—with picnics—at their beck and call.