A few weekends ago, Johnnie, myself, and some friends went on the Korean Wine Train. We booked the tour trough the tourism office on our military base, but the Wine Train is available for everyone in Korea be it individuals or groups.
As advertised: The Wine Train tour begins with a two-hour train ride in themed train cars with all-you-can-drink wine and snacks. Upon arriving at the winery, you visit the winery facilities, have lunch, enjoy a wine foot bath, and make wine soap. After that the tour continues to a local attraction depending on weather and availability before taking the two-hour train ride back to where you started from.
Seeing the brochures and the website, I had been looking forward to going on the Wine Train for months! Maybe I built it up too much in my head, or perhaps the tour just really doesn’t deliver all it is supposed to. Was it fun? Yes, definitely a good time but I was expecting more and felt unfulfilled at the end.
We got a tray of snacks for the train ride but it left a little to be desired… cheese puff balls, yellow cheese slices in plastic cut into four pieces (really?), saltine crackers, ritz crackers, a sliced banana, some Korean ginseng snacks, and some small sweet cakes. I was really expecting something a little more upscale on a “wine train” especially with the amount that the trip cost.
There were four wines to choose from on the train; one white and three red. Let’s just say that Korea is not known for its quality grape wines but at least there was wine to drink! It was supposed to be all-you-can-drink but the waiters only came around to fill glasses once, okay maybe twice, without someone going and asking them to do so. Couldn’t they please have left a bottle at the table?
After arriving at the Yeongdong Station, we boarded a tour bus for a short ride to Wine Korea. This is the only grape winery in South Korea and has only been making wine for 25 years.
The first thing we did at the winery was have lunch. According the brochure we were supposed to gather for lunch under a grapevine awning (the room pictured below) which would’ve been amazing! However, that room must have been an extra $5 as well because that’s not where we got to eat.
Instead, we all gathered in this dining hall (nice but not grapevine awning nice) where we were offered a red and a white wine served out of boxes. Boxed wine at a winery luncheon? Really? The nice room pictured above had wine served from barrels…. just sayin’…
Lunch was a buffet with a variety of Korean dishes to choose from. It was okaaayyy but not especially good. It didn’t help that the winery underestimated the number of people that would be there and they ran out of food. Luckily there was plenty of boxed wine left.
After lunch, we headed to the foot bath area. This was a charming room with a ceiling of grapevines heavy with grapes. There were many square tubs filled with hot “grape-colored water” and also individual buckets filled with the same along the sides of the room. We were told that the tubs were big enough for 10 people to sit around. Umm… maybe 10 Korean people, but 8 of us would’ve been more comfortable.
We each got a towel and a pair of rubber sandals before heading to the tubs. The sandals didn’t quite fit all American-sized feet. After we finished, the sandals were placed back on the table for the next group of people to use… no form of cleaning or sterilization was done to them. Wish I had known that before I put them on my feet. At least the towels appeared to be washed.
That was it. What about the wine soap making? “That old brochure. We not do that today.” Hmmm…
Our tour group boarded the bus and stopped at a local ginseng festival (which will be another post) before heading back to the train for the ride home.