CRUISE FOCUS
A TASTE OF SICILY
In addition to selecting wines for The Glasshouse, Olly Smith has blended exclusive house wines for P&O which will be rolled out across the fleet. These were sourced at vineyards in Sicily and blended from different grapes to produce red, white and rosé wines labelled Porto Palo after the fishing village near the Sicilian vineyard, and retailing on board at £12.
These wines won a
‘Commended’ notation in the Decanter World Wine awards this year. Olly also selected an exclusive sparkling Prosecco for Azura.
gers to try wines from varied countries and vintages.
In addition, wine flights are offered of three 125ml glasses of different wines that come with tasting notes and let passengers have their own mini-wine tastings costing from just £7.95. There are seven themed flights such as
Luxury, Beginners Luck, Olly’s Favourite Wines and Exotic Whites, the last flight including an award-winning sparkling Peller Icewine from Niagara, blended from the juice of frozen grapes picked in the cold Canadian winter. Smith travels on Azura several times
a year to run wine-tastings and talks and wants to introduce wine evenings and wine games interacting with passengers. “I en- courage experimentation,” he insists. Most wines are sold at on-shore retail prices. Windstar is another line encouraging exploration of wines. Its new Yachtsmen’s
38 WORLD OF CRUISING I Winter 2010 / 2011
Discovery Programme features wines by the glass; a choice of 21 wines of 14 blends from 13 areas; wine flights of four glasses; and sommelier-led wine tastings on each sailing.
E
xclusive wines are found on several other cruise lines. Hurtigruten in- troduced its own house wine this
spring from Portugal, a country with whom Norway traditionally traded fish for wine. Hurtigruten’s Periquita comes from José Maria da Fonseca near Lisbon, a company who have a tradition of ageing wines by putting them on long sea voyages. For its 20th
anniversary this year, Crystal
Cruises introduced its own Pinot Noir to add to its C and C reserve wine labels, which include a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay. They come from the “C” Vineyard in
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