"Waiter, Bring Us Some Fresh Wine."

This post's headline is a Steve Martin line from his classic movie, “The Jerk.”  I’m not going to explain it to you here, but I am going to explain why I’m referencing wine.

Croatia was added as a pre-trip to an already planned Bordeaux river cruise (I know, it’s NOT the Bordeaux River, but the point is to visit the Bordeaux wine region.)

So, after Split, Maddy flew to Italy to meet up with friends (she starts her job at a law firm in early October), while Carol and I flew to Bordeaux, France via Amsterdam to visit the best region in the world for wine – Bordeaux.

You know you've arrived at the

Bordeaux Airport  when you are

greeted by the largest of

wine bottles.

I was never interested in wine until one night in the early 2000s.  Carol and I went to dinner with friends at an independent Arlington steakhouse called “Ray’s The Steaks.”  After talking with us about our order (rib-eyes, medium-rare, which is the only way to cook and eat steak), Mike the owner (“Ray” was the nickname a girlfriend had given him, which means either she wasn’t very creative or she had weird daddy issues, but I liked Mike and wasn’t going to ask him which reason it was).

I leveled with him.  “I’ve got no idea what to order.  I usually don’t drink wine, and frankly am intimidated by wine.”  He recommend a SuperTuscan (which I’d never heard of before) named “Terrabianca.”  

Well, that bottle of wine totally changed my attitude about wine.  Both of my brothers were long-time wine snobs, talking about “mouth feel,” “aroma of pencil shavings and cow pies,” “drinking wine from a glass not made by Riedel crystal is like drinking Mad Dog 2020,” and other such nonsense.  I was old school Tom T. Hall – “I Like Beer.”

After the bottle of Terrabianca, I started buying and consuming other Italian reds, then moved on to wines of other countries.  Oh, I don’t talk about “mouth feel” (and you shouldn’t either) and I rarely discern aromas in wine.  I just know that when I taste wine, I know what I like and don’t like.  People who think I know a lot about wine ask for my advice, and I usually start with “drink what you like” and end with “try different wine countries/regions and drink what you like.”

I’m partial to Old World wines – Spanish, Italian, and French.  Carol and I make a lot of Spanish food, so that’s probably what we go through the most.  But we also like Oregon Pinot Noirs, Australian reds, and have gone through stages of South African reds, and really enjoyed the Croatian wines we were drinking in Dubrovnik and Split.  I do like to pair wine by country (Spanish wine with Spanish food, Italian wine with Italian food, and so on, or by type of food – Pinot Noirs with chicken or fish, for instance).

(Editor: For a guy who claims he’s not a wine snob, this trip down memory lane is getting awfully self-indulgent!

Writer: Well of course it’s self-indulgent, I’m writing about wine!)

Anyhow, to me, the best wines in the world are produced in Bordeaux.  You may disagree, and you’d be wrong.  And remember, we love Spain and look for any excuse to have Ribero del Duero, a Priorat, or a Rioja.  In fact, these days I have too much stored wine that I’ve stopped buying wine. . .except for Spanish reds, because our Spanish wine collection is running low.

(Editor: Oh, how ever will you cope?

Writer: With more Spanish wine, of course).

For years now I’ve wanted to go to Bordeaux.  Our friends Gene and Cindy Laporta (Laporta means “the gate” in Italian – that would be a cool nickname for a mobster, Gene “The Gate” Laporta) had done a Bordeaux river cruise, and that struck me as the best way to get around that sprawling region.

I’ve even put together groups of guys to pool money and buy Bordeaux futures from 2016, ‘18, and ‘20.  This allows everyone to have many different appellations (regions of , 

So, when our vacation club, Inspirato, released a Bordeaux River cruise option for late August, we signed up, and since members can bring guests, our friends Don and Jennifer Minnis also signed on.

We hadn’t been on an Inspirato cruise since Antarctic in January 2016 and then the Arctic in June of 2018.  Those were fantastic cruises, not only because of how special the destinations were, but because they were so well done.  Now we use Inspirato for either houses or hotels, but we also use VRBOs and Marriott points. 

The timing was pretty ironic, however, as since we signed up, Carol and I are drinking a lot less wine and less often.  Jennifer doesn’t drink red at all, and may have a glass of white or sparkling, while Don has all but quit drinking alcohol.  

So we found ourselves in the wonderful city of Bordeaux with approximately a day and half prior to the cruise.