Cruising With Wine Provides Expert Advice On Little-Known Vintages
By Melissa Jacobs
Part – or most – of the joy of traveling in Europe is exploring countries’ food, wine, beer and spirits. But which wines, beers and spirits should you drink in which regions? Michele Gargiulo Edington knows.
In addition to being a best-selling author and one of our region’s most respected wine and spirits experts, Michele has a long list of bona fides. She is a Certified Sommelier, Certified Specialist of Wine, and Certified Sake Advisor, and an Executive Bourbon Steward.
Now, Michele has (ahem) poured her knowledge into a new website and app called Cruising With Wine, a comprehensive guide to planning what to drink and eat at Europe’s most-traveled cruise destinations.
MJ: How did you come up with the idea for Cruising With Wine? You and your hubby have been traveling a lot. Is this an offshoot of those trips?
Michele: Zak and I have traveled quite a bit, and that shaped the way I built Cruising With Wine. I’m always looking for local grapes, food that belongs with them and the things I wouldn’t have known to look for before I arrived. That definitely played a part in the business.
But Cruising With Wine actually started because of my dad, Tom Gargiulo. He was planning a European river cruise with my mom and realized how hard it was to figure out which wines he should look for at each stop.
You can find endless information about what cathedral to see or what excursion to book, but there wasn’t really anything saying: You’re getting off the ship here, this is the grape that grows here, the wine you should order, what you should eat with it, and this is the bottle worth bringing home that might be hard to find in the USA.
I started making that information for my dad and then I thought: Well, why doesn’t this exist for everyone?
MJ: Cruising With Wine works if you are on a cruise or doing a land-based visit to a certain region, correct?
Michele: Absolutely! Cruising With Wine was designed around river cruising because those travelers have limited time in each specific place. But the wine and food information works whether you arrive by ship, airplane, hot air balloon, train, car or anything else. If you’re spending a few days in the Wachau, you still want to know which grapes matter, what local foods to try, which wineries are nearby, and what bottle is worth bringing home.
MJ: How did you select which regions and rivers to cover?
Michele: I started with the major European river cruise routes and looked at where the ships stop. Then, I mapped those stops against the wine regions around them. It was interesting because sometimes the port itself is famous for wine, or the interesting wine region is a short drive away. I want Cruising With Wine to show what somebody could realistically experience during that specific stop. I started with routes like the Rhine, Danube, Douro, Rhône/Saône, Seine and Bordeaux and expanded from there.
MJ: There is so much information on the website! Tons of helpful tips and insider info. Did you already know about most of these wines? Or did you do a lot of research?
Michele: Both. I’m lucky in that I’ve traveled to Europe a lot. I’ve made a lot of friends in the wine world. So when I go overseas, I have places to stay and wineries to visit. I also blog and keep notes in my phone which helps me to remember a lot of things that I otherwise wouldn’t.
I also love talking to people in foreign countries. I want to know what the real locals are eating and drinking and not just what Google wants me to know. The grapes, appellations, styles and classic regions weren’t starting from zero because this is what I do as a sommelier. However, the level of detail on Cruising With Wine required a ridiculous amount of additional research.
For example, I’ve been to the Mosel and it was easy to say that region makes Riesling. But knowing what somebody should drink at a particular stop, which producer makes sense, which winery they can realistically reach from the ship, what terminology they’ll see on the label and which bottle is worth dragging home is much more in depth.
MJ: Are some of these wines only available in their country of origin? Or can you get them in the U.S.?
Michele: It depends on the producer. I tried to choose wines for Cruising With Wines that are hard to find in the U.S. so it’s worth the trouble of transporting them home. Some of the wines are imported into the U.S., but plenty of smaller, regional producers have limited distribution or no meaningful distribution here at all.
That was actually part of the fun for me! I don’t want someone traveling all the way to Europe and ordering the exact same bottle they can find at a wine shop at home. I want them to know what is special about where they are! A bottle being difficult to find back in the U.S. makes it a much better souvenir.
MJ: Being a sommelier at your level means that you know quite a bit about how to pair wine with food. But how did you know the intricacies of the foods in these regions?
Michele: Food was actually my first career. I went to the Culinary Institute of America before moving further into wine, so food and wine have always overlapped for me. A lot of the classic regional pairings are things I already knew, but I still researched the individual foods and traditions at every stop.
Then I looked at them the way I would if I were pairing something for a guest at a restaurant: acidity, fat, salt, sweetness, spice, texture and how intense the dish is. I enjoyed planning which grapes in the area go best with the food they’re making in the region.
I think keeping regional foods with regional wines just makes sense. Those combinations usually developed together for a reason, and who am I to come in and change it all? I looked for pairings that were incredibly specific and made me believe that nobody getting off a cruise ship is going to know to order this unless someone tells them.
MJ: Cruising With Wine costs $24.95. What does that include that is not in the free version?
Michele: The free version helps you planning. You can explore routes and see the regional wine styles, grapes, stop overviews and wine snapshots.
The $24.95 full version unlocks the specific bottles I recommend, local food and cheese pairings, nearby wineries, what to bring home, shore-excursion timing, and the personalized Cruise Guide where you can enter your dates and wine preferences and get matched with wineries near each stop.
You can also download the whole guide before the trip so it still works when the ship Wi-Fi inevitably decides it has given up on life and your service is spotty.
MJ: How did you create the website and the app?
Michele: My dad and I built it together, which made the whole project even more fun considering he’s the reason it started in the first place.
I created and wrote the wine side of it and spent an unreasonable amount of time deciding what information should exist at every stop and how someone would use it while traveling. My dad worked with me on the technical side and turning all of that information into an actual working site.
While it sounds absurd to say my dad is more technologically advanced than I am, he worked for IBM for his entire career and I’m convinced he knows everything about the internet. My dad turned what was basically a giant pile of wine research and spreadsheets into something someone can actually carry around Europe.
For more information and to get your free travel guide, visit Cruising With Wine.
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