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What does it mean to be a Wanderluster?

“To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen, Danish storyteller

The Wine Wanderluster takes its name and its spirit from that line. HC Andersen travelled to open his senses, and every tasting and vineyard day Jannik hosts sets out to do the same for you.

Choose your experience Open HC Andersen's journal
A nineteenth-century photograph of Hans Christian Andersen reading at a small table with a carafe beside him
HC Andersen at his table, a carafe close at hand.

For HC Andersen, travel opened the senses

  • to light
  • to language
  • to landscapes
  • to the people he met
  • to wine, of course
  • to the quiet wonder of the unfamiliar

For HC Andersen a journey meant more than getting from one place to another. Across Germany, France, Italy and England he gathered impressions, and they found their way into his letters, his travel books and his stories.

His journeys show how travel softens the eye and wakes the imagination. A new road on the map opened a new road in his mind: a pilgrimage across the country that was also a pilgrimage through his own senses.

Jannik builds every Wine Wanderluster day on the same idea. You come for the wine, and you go home knowing the place it grew in.

HC Andersen's travel journal

Five journeys that shaped the storyteller, from his home harbour to five weeks with Dickens in Kent. Keep scrolling to turn the pages.

  1. Engraving-style illustration of a traveller with a bag walking along the Copenhagen harbour among tall ships
    Plate I. Copenhagen

    Home port

    Copenhagen

    Born in Odense in 1805, HC Andersen made his home in Copenhagen. It was the city he set out from, and the city he came back to with his notebooks full.

  2. Engraving-style illustration of a cloaked walker on a rocky path above misty pine forests and a ruined castle
    Plate II. The Harz mountains

    1831

    The Harz mountains

    His first journey abroad took him through Germany and up into the Harz mountains. He wrote about the trip in Shadow Pictures.

  3. Engraving-style illustration of a Paris quay with carriages, gas lamps and Notre-Dame across the river
    Plate III. Paris

    1833

    Paris

    In 1833 he travelled to Paris. The city was only the start: from there he carried on south to Italy.

  4. Engraving-style illustration of a traveller resting under a vine pergola beside a jug, with Roman ruins behind
    Plate IV. Italy and Rome

    1833 to 1834

    Italy and Rome

    Italy stayed with him long after he left. It inspired his novel The Improvisatore, published in 1835.

  5. Engraving-style illustration of a red-brick country house in Kent with a carriage on the drive and oast houses beyond
    Plate V. England and Kent

    1847 and 1857

    England and Kent

    He first came to England in 1847. Ten years later he spent five weeks in Kent as the guest of Charles Dickens at Gad's Hill Place.

Three walkers on a chalky track between autumn vines, with farmland and the Downs beyond
Walking the rows on a Sussex afternoon.

From the road to the vineyard

The Wine Wanderluster carries HC Andersen's spirit into the world of wine. You stand where the vines meet the sky, breathe in damp earth and oak, and hear the hush of a working winery.

Through small tastings, private vineyard visits and journeys planned around you, Jannik asks you to taste with curiosity and feel with intention. A landscape leaves its mark on every bottle, and he shows you where to find it.

What a glass can hold

Start a journey of your own

Pick an urban winery evening in London or a day on the chalk in Sussex and Kent, and meet the host who plans every one of them.

See the experiences Meet Jannik