Wine Train

Marshall made reservations for us to go on a trip offered through the ITT office here at Osan for our Anniversary.  The beauty of the ITT trips is that the transportation and all the plans are provided for you.  They normally include a tour guide, which is great to have when you are farther away from base where there might not be many people who speak English.  Marshall even arranged for an all day babysitter and different evening babysitter for the kids!  Our kids (at least Mdx, but probably Mav too) LOVE having babysitters.  Mdx loves the new attention she gets, and thinks babysitters are much more fun than boring old Mama and Daddy.

This was our train car, attached to a few other "Wine Train" cars that were also attached to a normal passenger train.

We got settled on the train and were ready to drink!

These were the four wines they offered during the train ride to the vineyard: 1)White dry wine, 2) Red dry wine, 3) Nouveau wine (this was my favorite) and 4) Sweet wine.  They were okay, but there wasn't one that I really loved.

We got to wear this sweet name badge all day.  Those little people are made out of ginseng.

These little rubber mats are made out of the same stuff we lined our kitchen cabinets with, with a little crocheted edge on it.

This is Julie our tour guide, she was great!  Once the train arrived at the town where the Wine Korea Vineyard is, we got off the train and onto a tour bus for the 15 minutes drive to the vineyard.  The wine industry in Korea is very new, I believe she said it is less than twenty years old.  So the wines are still developing, but they are very good and win awards.

We knew we were getting close to the vineyard when we saw grape vines and orchards!  It was a dreary overcast day, but not too cold and not too hot.

The warehouses.

Our tour busses at the front of Chateau Mani.  (That name always made me think of manicure)

Once we got off the bus it was time for lunch! They served a large buffet of mostly Korean food, and two different wines were served at lunch.

There were little glasses, bigger than shot glasses and smaller than wine glasses.  The two types of wine they gave us at lunch were gender specific.  Some kind of potency-energy wine for men (viagra wine?), and some kind of sweet berry wine for women.  They did not taste very good, so we got more of the wine we had on the train.

We sat with a really funny couple that came on the tour from Kunsan, and the guy was telling a story when this picture was taken.  Obviously it was a funny story!

Giant blow up bottle of wine.  I think Mike McIntyre needs one of these!!

These were large tubs filled with hot Hot HOT grape juice.

This is what we did with the hot grape juice!  We had to add a lot of cold water before it was tolerable.  Two people in our group dropped their cellphones into the water while we were sitting there.  Ugh!!

Coming next.......Wine train part 2!