Chalon, France: Remedial Wine Knowledge and Struggling Without Closed-Caption
Over the last few days, I have learned so much about wine. To be honest though, the bar was pretty low for me from the start. Before I got in this ship, I knew that there were three types of wine: red, rose and white; I knew that I preferred red to white, but not in the summer; I liked Cabernet over Merlot and I love Italian wines but I think they have the edge only because my grandparents came from Italy—none of whom were in the wine business. That’s pretty much it. When my sister and brother-in-law, who know a great deal about wine, told us that they were going on a wine cruise, we thought that this would be a very different type of vacation for us. We were right. What we didn’t know was that nearly everyone on the ship are somewhere between wine experts and enthusiastic drinkers. It became clear almost immediately that Bob and I were, at best, remedial wine drinkers. Besides visiting crumbling abbeys thanks to the French Revolution, I have spent a good portion...