Wine Train

The Wine Train

 (sung to the tune of "Love Train" by The O' Jays).

This past Saturday, Kelly and I, along with Winnie-SHI and Joley-MON went on Korea's finest Wine Train.  About a month ago I noticed that an acquaintance of ours had posted some pictures of their adventures on a mysterious wine train.  I was instantly curious about this so called, "wine train", so I spared no hesitation in calling Winnie (my co-teacher at SLP) to investigate further.  

After Winnie did her thing on NAVER, we all came to the conclusion that this must be done with no reservations.  We pretty much instantly booked within the next couple of days (as this train gets sold out and only runs twice a week).  While the high price of such adventure would (and did) have its repercussions later in the month (i.e., payday needs to get here), we're glad to have done this.

The concept of the wine train is quite simple, it was a normal KoRail train that had 4 cars tagged on the end which were lavishly decorated to serve wine.  We rode the train one-way for about three hours throughout Korea (where we actually went, we do not know).  

 They were giving us instructions on how to properly smell and taste wine as well as the proper way to make a toast.

 Joel waeguk doesn't know what's going on.

 fruit and cheese platter provided

 While on the the train we were able to sample four different types of wine.  One being white and the other three red.  All the wine was from the vineyard we were heading to "Chateau Mani".  Mani being the name of the mountain the vineyard was near.

After three hours on the train enjoying the country side (as it is always great to get out of Seoul once in a while), we boarded a bus and went to the vineyard to eat lunch and tour the place.

The vineyard provided a pretty tasty lunch, and of course, lots o' wine.

 Wine on tap.

Free wine is the best wine.

In front of the Chateau.

While on the tour, we had a foot bath in grape water.  I was a little curious but the water had the aroma of grapes and felt great.

A small portion of a fairly large wine cellar

View from the Chateau

Grapes and things.

After a couple hours at the vineyard, we boarded the bus once again and went to a Ginseng museum.  Here we learned about the process of ginseng production, as well as the health benefits.  We were also able to try some ginseng makali.

Following the interesting, yet menial portion of the trip, we visited a large cave where they store a lot of their wine.  This cave also had some interesting background to it as well.  During the Korean War, people would hide and seek shelter in caves such as this one during air raids and so forth.

 Lots of wine is stored in this cave.

  

Following the cave visit, we went back to the train station and boarded the train back to Seoul.  It was a pretty long day, actually.  We left Ilsan around 8:00 am and didn't get back until 10:45pm.  The entire duration of the tour was about 12 hours.  A long day and a lot of wine, but still quite a bit of fun.  Kelly and I would probably put it in the top 10 things we have done IN Korea thus far.  

Also, we just might be put in Korea news in a couple of weeks.  There was a news team that was following the train and they interviewed Kelly and myself a couple of times.  They caught me sayin "Cho-eye-yo" (I like) and they had to get that on camera.  Quite awkward but I hope it gets aired.  I'll probably never know...

Website for the Wine Train