Celebrity Cruises Destinations....

VINTAGE VOYAGES
Celebrity Wine Program entices and enriches the palate

Wine is a joy to the senses. Drinking it is a pleasurable experience that consumers, increasingly sophisticated about food and cooking, are allowing themselves to indulge more fully - no longer intimidated by the snobbery that once seemed to infest the wine scene. Yet, for all that, Jacques Van Staden senses a certain hesitation.

"People still want to play it safe," says Van Staden, vice president of Culinary Operations for Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises. He recalls dining with a friend who had discovered Opus One, the much-praised Robert Mondavi-Baron Philippe de Rothschild wine that he says "put Napa Valley on the map 10 years ago." Van staden's friend had a wine collection of 1,500 bottles, more than a third of which were Opus One. "He said to me, 'What can I do? I like the wine, but I can't buy out the whole vineyard.'"

Van Staden thinks many people share his friend's dilemma: Feeling they don't really know that much about wine, when they find one as esteemed as Opus One, they cling to it like a drowning man grasping a lifer preserver. Pinot Noir became one of those life preservers after being celebrated in the hit 2004 movie Sideways.

Van Staden helped his friend embrace a new wine with equal passion - which is exactly what Van Staden and his culinary crew do for Celebrity guests, on a grander scale. Connoisseurs and novices alike have always benefited from these experts' considerable knowledge of the grape, shared at enrichment programs or simply at tableside at dinner. Heightening the experience are trained sommeliers who love sharing their expertise, and special cruises to ports of call in renowned wine-producing regions.

Now they're taking their work to a whole new level with Savor, the culinary portion of the three-pronged Celebrity Life enrichment program. Adding to an already stellar culinary experience, Savor offers eight new wine enrichment events, six spirit and mixology tastings, and several different interactive programs hosted by each ship's executive chef. Guests can visit the world's great vineyards via in-stateroom television, or personally sample the wines at the Taste of the Vineyard event onboard.

"What I want to achieve," says Van Staden," is to educate our guests and make them feel more comfortable about wine." One of the ways Savor does that, he says, is by investing considerably in training crew members: "At the end of the day, there are so many different types of wine. You have to be able to recommend the ones that the guests will appreciate, and to place our guests in a confident, relaxed environment for enjoying them."

Or, as Celebrity wine consultant Rick Garced puts it, "It's our job to find out what you like, and to bring you those choices."

Quenching the Thirst for Knowledge

Garced says the Celebrity Wine Program's goal is "to provide new opportunities to taste wine," and with more than 300 selections on Century and Millennium ship classes--more than 450 on the Solstice class--the goal has been superbly exceeded. The seagoing cellar includes more than 75 unique and extremely rare bottlings, as well as California cult wines, Grand Cru Chapagnes and many wines by the glass for sampling and learning. And the Cellarmasters Private Label wines were created exclusively for the cruise line by the esteemed Kendall Jackson vineyards. Master glassmaker Riedel also continues to offer enlightening workshops in proper glass selection.

"We claim, overall, to be the most innovative and forward-thinking wine program in the world," says Garced. "I do believe we have the best wine program in the world for marine hotel programs."

Garced is an internationally known wine master, restaurateur, writer and wine consultant who has worked with Celebrity for more than 11 years. He is wine editor and columnist for Dining Out magazine and president of the U.S. Sommelier Association, which teaches a professional-level wine-education course at the Miami campus of the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts.

Some of the world's most talented chefs have graduated from and worked with Le Cordon Bleu, Garced says, "and Jacques Van Staden, in my opinion, is equal in caliber to any of them. It's just incredible what he's doing with the wine list and the food. He's taken up a lot of contemporary food concepts such as clean cuisine, and his concept for the wine has been to bring about a wide breadth of flavors that will match the flavors of the cuisine." On the Solstice-class vessels, for instance, acidic Rieslings are carried, in part, specifically to match the spicy Asian selections at the Silk Harvest specialty restaurant.

Selections to savor

Van Staden explains that he has "accessorized each restaurant with its own wine menu." The upscale Murano, for instanced, has "more of a French bias" with fine Bordeaux and Burgundy selections, and the wine list climbs the price ladder all the way to $4,000 bottles of Screaming Eagle. Tuscan Grille's Super Tuscan choices show the restaurant's Italian roots, while Blu offers a little of both.

Wines are also intended simply to cover a range of tastes and desires, says Chanelle Duarte, the cruise line's beverage development consultant. "The value-driven wines will fool you with their elegance and complexity," she says, "and the rare-vintage wines will impress even the most avid collector."

"We offer something for every fancy," Duarte says, "and we hope all our guests will try new wines they have never had and leave with an experience they'll never forget."

Savoring Your Vacation

The new Celebrity Life program, Savor, was shaped by Jacques Van Staden, the cruise line's vice president of Culinary Operations, who is an award-winning chef and restaurateur. Savor covers three areas of Celebrity's much-honored food and beverage offerings:

* The Celebrity Vineyards wine enrichment program, developed in partnership with the U.S. Sommelier Association, features immersive wine events that provide guests with the opportunity to expand their understanding and appreciation of the fascinating world of wine.

* Signature Spirits events unleash the "inner mixologist" as guests explore the modern world of spirits and cocktails. The exclusive Mixology 101 workshops were developed in partnership with Bacardi, while the industry-first Molecular Mixology was created by world-renowed Master Mixologist Junior Merino, known as the Liquid Chef.

* The Food as Art culinary arts program includes highly interactive and participatory cooking shows led by onboard chefs, as well as cooking contests, behind-the-scenes tours and a special line-up of guest chefs who will set sail with Celebrity throughout the year.

Tasting Tips

* The Nose Knows

Scientists say that at least 80 percent of taste is actually smell, so "nosing" wine is an important step in tasting it. Wine experts swirl the wine a bit to aerate it and release the typically pleasant bouquets. After that, the only way to really smell a wine is get your nose inside the glass and take several short sniffs; this maximizes the aromas more than one long inhalation.

* Not Just the Tip of the Tongue

After several sniffs, it's time to sip. Taking a healthy mouthful and swishing it throughout the mouth (reaching all parts of the tongue) is the way to taste, holding the wine in the mouth for a few seconds to get the full flavor. One general rule is that better wines tend to have a longer finish (and flavor).

By the Glass - At Last

Buy a $3,000 bottle of wine and drink just one or two glasses? Not unless you want the rest to be vinegar in the morning.

On Celebrity's Solstce-class vessels, that's no longer true. The Enomatic Wine Preservation & Serving System keeps flavors and characteristics intact after a bottle is opened. The system makes it possible to sample from different bottles - saving a bottle you like for later, or passing up one you don't like without having to buy the whole thing.

The Glass Matters

A wine's bouquet and taste can be dramatically affected by the glass into which it's poured. Not only do size and shape matter, but the quality of the glass itself is a key factor. Most of us know not to pour brandy into a Champagne flute, but the decisions can get complex: Red wines and white wines take different glasses, and the choices narrow even further for, say, a mature red Bordeaux.

To help guests sort it all out, Celebrity offers the Riedel Comparative Wine Class. Created in partnership with Riedel, an Austrian crystal manufacturer that has been creating perfectly suited beverage glasses for more than 300 years, the class showcases wine in varietal-specific stemware.

The class is led by Celebrity's sommeliers, who take guests through tastings of four varietals (chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon). Each participant receives a set of four Riedel tasting glasses, which can be shipped home for at an additional charge. If that only whets your appetite for more Riedel, a wide selection of the company's glassware is available at www.celebritycruises.com.