Two days ago, I was in Naples, sampling tart lemon liqueur from the island of Capri. In a few days, I shall sip sweet sangria in Spain. But today, I am enchanted by the rolling hills and winding roads of Italy’s sun-drenched Chianti countryside, where vineyards and olive trees dominate the landscape and golden villas with bright green shutters preside over fields and farms.■ This is day No. 3 of my “Wine and Food Festival” cruise through the Mediterranean aboard the ship Serenity. Every year, Crystal Cruises hosts more than a dozen such wine-themed sailings. I was lucky enough to be on one of them.

The cruise featured wine tastings, wine-paired dinners, and traditional Mediterranean feasts. The ship’s dining room offered a 25,000-bottle wine list representing every grape-growing region in the world. And that was just onboard. Onshore in Italy, Spain, and the south of France, I had the opportunity to put my newfound education into practice.

Wine times at sea

“Wine can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be,” announced wine expert Hoke Harden, a member of the Society of Wine Educators. Harden, who led seminars in the ship’s elegant dining room, was affable, down-to-earth, and, thankfully, lacked any trace of wine-snob silliness.

“Wine can be enjoyed with no vast knowledge learned beforehand,” he said. “But as with most things of value, when one learns more, one can appreciate more. When you taste a wine, you experience the place [where] it was made and its culture.”

And so, in our efforts to expand our appreciation of wine and of Mediterranean wine country, we swirled, sipped, and sniffed under Harden’s guidance. He explained that Americans identify wines by the grape from which they are made, but Italians name wine by where it was produced. We sampled Fiano d’Avellino, a clean, dry white produced in Avellino, a province near Naples; a pleasant Greco di Tufo; and a classic Chianti.

Later, Harden presented us with a selection of French and Spanish wines. We learned that the Basque area is becoming trendy, “the Napa Valley of Spain,” Harden said. We compared fashionable white Spanish Albariño with a French pinot gris.

Some people studiously took notes and bantered about such terms as “body, intensity, and ‘mouth feel.’ ” Others (including me) sat back and enjoyed while waiters hovered, refilling our glasses and passing around plates piled with cheese, grapes, crackers, dried fruit, and nuts.

Cin cin means cheers

Our first port of call was bustling, noisy, cosmopolitan Naples, where I lost myself amid seemingly random, ridiculously narrow, chaotic streets and alleys. The city’s fashionable clothing boutiques, fruit stands, espresso cafes, gelaterias (ice cream parlors), and pizzerias delighted me.

It was here that I fell in love with limoncello, a citrus liqueur in beautifully shaped bottles. On a tiny side street, I discovered Pizzeria Brandi, in operation since 1780. This is where the mozzarella-tomato Pizza Margherita (named after the queen of Italy) was invented. Judging by the noisy Italian-speaking diners crowding the small outside tables, it is still one of the most popular places in town.

In Tuscany, I joined a group headed to San Gimignano, a 12th-century fortified village perched high in the hills. Its 13 towers create a distinctive, fairy-tale skyline, and most everything within the city walls remains unchanged since pilgrims and traders walked these roads. Wine stores, art galleries, and ceramic shops line narrow streets. I purchased a bottle of the traditional white wine of the area and stopped in Tinacci Tito’s store for a hand-painted wine jug.

We later convened at the Poggio Alloro farm in Siena, where the Fioroni brothers cultivate grapes, olives, wheat, honey, and saffron. One member of our group couldn’t resist plucking an olive from the tree and popping it into his mouth. Our Italian guide suddenly remembered to warn us that fresh olives taste extremely bitter. We looked at our poor friend, his face contorted in disgust. For the rest of the cruise, the hapless fellow was known as “olive guy.”

The farm’s staff invited us to a hearty, family-style lunch of pasta, salad, and wine. “Wine is not only a drink for us, but a way of life,” our guide explained. “It is part of every meal and always served with food — never on its own.” I could not resist buying several bottles of the farm’s own ruby-red Chianti, produced in much the same way as it has been since the Middle Ages. It was an unbelievable bargain at only 4 euros.

Salud to sangria

After bidding Italy a fond arrivederci, we sailed to the French Riviera. There’s no better place to sample Provençal cuisine than Nice’s delightful marché aux fleurs, where farmers set up fruit, flower, fish, and food stalls that go on for blocks. The charming old part of town, Vieux Nice, reflects the region’s Italian influence with as many panini stands as patisseries, pizzerias alongside brasseries, and confectioners with handmade marzipan fruit and chocolate-covered olives.

Next stop was Malaga in Spain, where I was determined to find a great glass of sangria. The unabashedly fruity drink might not be a purist’s idea of fine wine. Thank goodness I’m not a purist.

Café Central, on Plaza de la Constitucion (the town’s main shopping, dining, and strolling promenade), quickly became my favorite hangout. Since 1954 patrons have ordered coffee here according to the amount of milk they like. The coffee menu ranges from “solo,” which is black espresso, to a creamy white “no me lo ponga,” which translates to “don’t bother.”

The place also touts its tapas, churros, and pescaitos (a popular “fast-food” fish), but the sangria, served in a tall, chilled glass and brimming with fruit, perfectly accompanied my saffron-scented paella. I chose an umbrella-shaded table with a view of shoppers and strollers and within earshot of a wandering guitar player. Later, in the café’s deli, I scooped up several bottles of syrupy black Malaga Dulce, a locally made dessert wine, and wondered how I would fit it all into my suitcase and bring it safely home.

Now that my journey is behind me, those pretty straw-bottomed bottles from Malaga — along with the limoncello and farmhouse Chianti — transport my thoughts to this sunny part of the world where the pace slows for afternoon siestas and a nice glass of wine costs less than water. And when I finish it all? I’ll go back to restock my supply.