Where We’re Going Next: Five Culinary Escapes Redefining Luxury Travel This Fall

k engels

2 days ago

From Italy’s great rail journeys and the cellars of Champagne to wild Scotland and a new culinary weekend in Las Vegas, these are the experiences on our radar for fall 2026.

Luxury travel is changing. The best journeys ahead aren’t simply about where you sleep—they’re about what happens between arrival and departure. From truffle country by vintage rail to Champagne beneath the streets of Reims, these are the culinary escapes on our radar for fall 2026.

There is a certain kind of trip that begins long before you reach the hotel.
Sometimes it begins when a train pulls away from the platform. Sometimes it’s the first glimpse of vines disappearing over a hillside, a table set somewhere you weren’t expecting, or the realization that dinner isn’t something scheduled around the day’s activities.

Dinner is the activity.

As we look toward autumn at FLAVORA, those are the journeys catching our attention. Food and wine aren’t being added to the itinerary anymore. Increasingly, they’re shaping the itinerary itself.

Here are five places—and experiences—we’re watching as summer turns toward fall.

1. Italy | Take the Long Way to Dinner

October may be one of the most delicious months imaginable for traveling through Italy. Grape harvest overlaps with olive harvest and truffle season, and this year the railway is becoming part of the culinary experience.

Three new autumn journeys illustrate just how wide that experience can be.

At the extraordinary end is La Dolce Vita Orient Express, whose five-day Rome-to-Istanbul journey travels through Venice, Budapest and Transylvania before reaching Istanbul. On board, the culinary program is overseen by three-Michelin-starred chef Heinz Beck. The October journey starts around $23,000 per person.

Then there’s the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express journey from Paris to Portofino, pairing the legendary train with two nights at Splendido. Scheduled for October 15–18, the experience starts around $23,500.

But perhaps the journey that intrigues us most costs about $80.
A vintage train will travel from Milan to Alba in roughly three and a half hours, timed to coincide with the International Alba White Truffle Fair, which runs October 10 through December 6. Wine, Piedmont landscapes and truffles become part of the journey.

Luxury, it turns out, doesn’t always require the most expensive ticket. Sometimes it’s simply having enough time to take the train.

2. Champagne, France | Go Beneath the Bubbles

Champagne hardly needs an introduction. But there is considerably more happening here than popping a cork in Épernay.

Beneath Reims are the extraordinary crayères, ancient chalk quarries that became vast underground Champagne cellars. Historic houses including Ruinart and Taittinger maintain cellars beneath Saint-Nicaise Hill, while today’s Champagne traveler can move between the great maisons, village growers, serious restaurants and increasingly sophisticated wine-country hotels.

Above ground, the culinary landscape has become reason enough to stay awhile. Michelin-starred dining, intimate contemporary restaurants and properties ranging from Domaine Les Crayères to newer wine resorts have transformed Champagne from a tasting excursion into a destination.

There is even another way to move through the region: by water, aboard a Champagne-focused Belmond barge journey. Our preferred itinerary? Go underground. Meet the growers. Stay for dinner. And give Champagne more than a day.

3. Sonoma County | The Hotel Becomes the Culinary Experience

Wine-country hotels have traditionally followed a familiar formula: beautiful room, beautiful pool, tasting-room reservations.

That’s changing.

At Appellation Healdsburg in Sonoma County, food isn’t simply an amenity attached to the hotel. It is part of the property’s identity.

The 108-room property opened in September 2025 with a culinary program connected to chef and co-founder Charlie Palmer. Its restaurants include Folia Bar & Kitchen and the rooftop Andys Beeline, with the property leaning heavily into Sonoma’s seasonal ingredients and agricultural identity.

Folia, for example, offers an ingredient-driven three-course dinner experience Wednesday through Sunday and it’s part of a larger shift we find fascinating: The luxury hotel is becoming a doorway into the local food system.

Not just a place to sleep after visiting wine country. Part of wine country itself.

4. Northern Scotland | Luxury Goes Wild

Then there is Scotland, where the idea of luxury moves in almost the opposite direction.

At Hope Lodge in northern Sutherland, the landscape isn’t scenery outside the window. It’s the reason to be there.

The restored 1870s lodge sits near Loch Hope and Ben Hope and forms part of Wildland’s ambitious long-term land-regeneration effort. Hiking, foraging and cold-water experiences put guests directly into the landscape rather than insulating them from it.

Its interiors combine Scottish antiques and natural materials with restrained contemporary design. This is a form of luxury we expect to see much more of: fewer velvet ropes, greater access to somewhere extraordinary.

Space, silence, wild landscapes, food connected to the place you’re standing and more importantly, enough time to notice all of it.

5. Las Vegas | A Different Kind of Drinking Town

Las Vegas might seem like the outlier on this list, and that’s precisely why we’re watching it.

From September 24–27, the inaugural Drink Las Vegas will spread more than 50 events across Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and Park MGM. Programming ranges from chef dinners and tastings to cocktail seminars and classes.

Among the more extravagant offerings is 24K: Caviar & The Classics, a Champagne-and-caviar experience at Bellagio. The participating culinary and beverage names include Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Michael Mina, Roy Choi and other prominent figures from food and cocktail culture.

What interests us isn’t simply another Las Vegas festival, it’s the continuing evolution of the cocktail as a culinary experience. For years, food travelers built entire trips around restaurant reservations. Increasingly, the bar deserves a place on that itinerary too. Las Vegas intends to make its case this September.

The New Luxury Is the Experience

There is a thread connecting an $80 vintage train to Alba with a $23,000 Orient Express journey, and it isn’t price. It’s access.

Access to the landscape. To a cellar underneath Champagne. To the people producing the food. To a remote corner of Scotland. To a chef’s interpretation of Sonoma. To a great bar at exactly the right hour.

The old markers of luxury haven’t disappeared. Beautiful hotels, extraordinary service and remarkable dining rooms still matter. But they’re no longer enough.

The trips we’re watching for fall 2026 ask travelers to participate—to board the train, walk into the vineyard, descend into the cellar, follow the road farther north, sit at the bar and stay for another course.

At FLAVORA, that’s the kind of luxury travel we’re interested in. Not simply where to go. What takes us there. What we find at the table. And what makes us want to stay.