Why Chiang Mai Is Becoming One of the World's Most Interesting Drinking Destinations

There is a global shift underway in how people choose to drink. Tripadvisor's Trendcast 2026, built from millions of bookings and reviews, tracks the emergence of what it calls Investigative Drinking -- a trend away from branded hotel bars and recognisable labels toward hyper-regional, artisan-at-source experiences. Travelers are going to Oaxaca to taste agave derivatives most people have never heard of. They are visiting family distilleries in rural South Africa for old-vine Chenin Blanc. They are booking experiences built around depth, provenance, and the peculiarity of place.

Experience bookings for regional spirits rose 36% year on year in Mexico. Matcha experiences in Japan are up 280%. The pattern is consistent across every market: people want to understand what they are drinking and where it came from, and they are willing to travel specifically to find out.

Most of them have not looked at Chiang Mai yet. That is about to change.

A Wine Industry Built on the Wrong Assumptions

When people think of Southeast Asian wine, they usually think of Khao Yai -- the region two and a half hours from Bangkok that has attracted the most investment and the most attention. But Thailand's wine story is expanding, and the growth of hospitality options in Chiang Mai is creating significant expectations for what is possible in the north. The northern highlands sit at 300 to 600 metres above sea level, with temperatures ranging from 10 to 25 degrees Celsius during the January to March harvest season -- cool enough to produce wines with genuine structure and character.

Thailand's Ministry of Finance cut tariffs on imported wine from 54% in early 2024, making wine more accessible across the country and accelerating the development of a genuine wine culture. The beneficiary of that culture shift is not just Bangkok. Chiang Mai is where northern Thailand's vineyards are, and it is where the most interesting drinking happens closest to the source.

At Skugga Estate Vineyard in Mae On, the vines are cultivated at altitude in the hills east of the city. The estate produces its own wines alongside gin, vodka, and craft beer -- a portfolio that maps directly onto what the Trendcast identifies as the new traveler priority: regional products you can only really understand by visiting the place that made them. Cellar door tastings and vineyard tours are available, and the wines themselves reflect exactly the kind of terroir-specific character that the Investigative Drinking trend is built around. This is not Thai wine trying to imitate somewhere else. It is wine that tastes like Mae On, and you cannot get that from a bottle shipped to a restaurant in Bangkok.

The Chocolate That Starts in the Ground

Chiang Mai has become, quietly, one of Southeast Asia's most interesting cacao regions. Thailand's cacao production is estimated at around 1,000 tonnes per year, with Chiang Mai among the key producing provinces, and the country's output is renowned for a variety of distinct regional flavours. Following the exponential growth of specialty coffee, Chiang Mai's newest cultural preoccupation is handmade chocolate from a growing number of micro-factories, artisan chocolatiers, and farm-based producers.

The world's fine chocolate community has taken notice. Single-origin cacao from the Doi Pui area near Chiang Mai, made with rare Criollo and Amelonado beans, is now being sought out by international craft chocolate buyers. Chiang Mai's organic cacao -- grown in the highlands of Mae Tang -- produces chocolate with slight floral notes and a delicate exotic fruitiness over a strong earthy body. These are flavour profiles that exist nowhere else, because they come from this specific soil, this specific altitude, this specific microclimate.

At the Skugga Chocolate Lab, single-origin cacao grown on the estate is fermented, dried, and stone-ground on site. Every step from tree to finished bar happens in the same place. That is full traceability in the most literal sense -- you can watch it happen. The tree-to-bar chocolate workshop walks visitors through the entire process: understanding cacao fermentation, seeing how processing affects flavour, and making chocolate from the bean. Tripadvisor's Trendcast records craft class bookings up 75% year on year globally. The reason is straightforward -- the souvenir you made yourself means more than anything you bought, and the understanding you walk away with changes how you taste everything afterward.

The Coffee You Don't Have to Go to Ethiopia to Find

Thailand's relationship with Arabica coffee is one of the more remarkable agricultural stories in Southeast Asia. The late King Bhumibol Adulyadej's Royal Project, launched in 1969, introduced Arabica coffee to the northern highlands of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai as a replacement for opium cultivation, and the region's cool climate, rich soil, and high altitude proved ideal for producing smooth, layered beans.

The result, decades later, is a coffee culture with genuine depth. Chiang Mai is one of only a few places on earth where progressive roasters, baristas, coffee lovers, and cafe owners are within an hour's drive of the coffee plantations and farmers who grow the beans, creating constant cross-pollination between production and consumption. Thailand's specialty coffee market has grown 15 to 20% annually, and Chiang Mai province produces over 3,200 tonnes of Arabica beans per year -- most of it shade-grown in the highlands, hand-picked, and increasingly processed using techniques borrowed from the world's best-regarded origins.

Chiang Mai's Arabica beans, with their distinctive chocolate and citrus notes, are beginning to attract serious attention in the global specialty coffee market. The Geisha variety, which commands some of the highest prices in specialty coffee globally, is now being grown and experimented with in the Chiang Mai highlands.

Skugga's shade-grown Arabica and Geisha beans are hand-harvested and roasted at the estate's on-site coffee roastery. The highland forest environment gives each batch a character that is distinctly northern Thai -- a forest quality in the cup that no imported bean can replicate. The coffee has ranked 4th and 5th nationally in competition. The Coffee and Tea Experience workshop covers the full tree-to-cup process in a half-day session, including the estate's forest-grown teas alongside the coffee -- because the same hills that produce the coffee also produce teas that carry the same environmental fingerprint.

The Place Itself

Mae On district sits about 30 minutes east of Chiang Mai city. Most visitors to Chiang Mai never go there. The district is known among locals for Mae Kampong, a mountain village at around 1,000 metres that thrives on ecotourism, tea cultivation, and coffee growing, and for the kind of forested hill country that makes northern Thailand worth visiting in the first place. It is cool, quiet, and almost entirely absent from the standard tourist circuit.

This is precisely the context the Trendcast is describing. Travelers in 2026 are not looking for the well-worn path. They are looking for lesser-known spots where they can encounter regional products and the people behind them -- family distilleries, rural workshops, places where what you are drinking is tied to the soil under your feet. Mae On is that place. It just happens to also have a vineyard, a chocolate lab, a coffee roastery, and forest-grown teas, all within a single estate.

The Day That Covers Everything

Skugga's full-day workshop combines the chocolate morning session, the coffee and tea afternoon, and lunch at the BarBQ bistro in between. Three distinct products, all grown on the same land, all explained by the people who produce them. It is the most complete single-site expression of the Investigative Drinking and Future Foodists trends currently available in Northern Thailand.

The farm cabin makes it possible to extend into an overnight stay -- arriving the evening before, spending the morning in the chocolate lab, the afternoon at the roastery, and ending the day at the vineyard's fine dining restaurant with a glass of something made from the vines you walked through earlier.

The best drinking destinations in 2026 are the ones that haven't been overrun yet. Mae On fits that description. The question is how long it stays that way.

Book a workshop or plan your visit at Skugga Estate.