Traveling across small-town country in the U.S. is always a reminder that an overwhelming number of Americans care little about fine wine.

In big and medium-sized U.S. cities today, it’s almost impossible not to find at least a handful of venues where the wine program is thoughtfully authored and managed.

But as our recent trip to Orange Beach (near Gulf Shores), Alabama revealed, even in popular tourist destinations like the pristine white beaches of the Alabama coast, wine is just another adult beverage like the tequila, vodka, and beer etc. restaurateurs use to fill their bar wells.

When Tracie and I take road trips with our girls, ages 10 and 11, we always bring a cooler filled with our own wine to drink at the hotel.

But when it comes to mealtimes, it’s highly uncommon to find restaurants that allow corkage outside our country’s great metropoles.

And as Tracie always says, if you can’t be with the Chardonnay you love, drink the Chardonnay you’re with!

Our go-to wine on this last trip was La Crema Chardonnay. Yes, you got that right. La Crema. Its fruit is cloyingly present and you can taste the oak chip treatment. But it’s not offensive or unpleasant. To me, it tastes more like a wine cooler than wine. But it’s fresh, drinkable, and ubiquitous.

One of the big surprises was how much we liked the Ferrari Carano Chardonnay, another mid-tier restaurant staple. This showed great for its class at one of our dinners, with good balance, freshness, and fruit, however unidimensional.

But we did find a compelling if modest wine program at Zeke’s in Orange Beach where we were staying.

We ended up drinking a bottle of Jermann Pinot Grigio with what was probably the best shrimp I’ve ever eaten in my life — no joke, they were that good.

Zeke’s prints and laminates its beverage list. That means when a wine is locked in, it’s there to stay.

But I was impressed with the drinkability and food-friendliness that informed the selections. There is clearly someone there who cares about wine. And we LOVED the food there.

Beyond the shrimp boil for two, I did Gulf Oysters, which were delicious, and Tracie ordered a hummus appetizer that we also enjoyed. I was tempted to the Moroccan-style pompano but had to do the crustaceans.

For the record, there is a fine dining, surf and turf venue in Orange Beach — Voyagers at the Perdido Beach resort — where there is a serious program. But this was more of a flip-flop and bathing suit vacation.

We had so much fun and the girls loved it so much that we are planning to go back next year to explore the beach — and the wine lists.

Happy summer, everyone! Hope you are staying cool. And thanks to everyone who signed up for our sold-out Piedmont dinner Wednesday night at Rossoblu in downtown Los Angeles.