Wine?

[AnotherVirginCruiser]

We have a couple special bottles of wine & champagna. Can you bring on your own on the ship?:p

[MSBYRDY]

Yes, put it in your carryon and just be discreet about it.

Marilyn

[canderson]

We have a couple special bottles of wine & champagna. Can you bring on your own on the ship?:p

 

You needn't be coy about bringing it with you. Celebrity has no complaints with you bringing your own wine.

 

We took 8 bottles along for our recent 11 nt. trip on the Summit for 4. Didn't last long! There's a $15 corkage charge for having it with your dinner.

 

Rather than having you ambling into the restaurant with bottles under your arms, the "correct" procedure is to write your cabin and table number on the bottles, and hand them over to your cabin steward for delivery to the dining room. The wine steward will assure that it is held at an appropriate temperature until dinner. Since this typically means an extra run for your assistant steward, be a sport and check the dinner menu early and give them your bottles as early as you are able. I liked to try to assure they had them by 5:00 so as not to interrupt them while they were working over the cabins of those at early seating.

 

Note about wine on Celebrity M-Class ships. Do NOT be bashful about asking to see and order from the specialty restaurant wine list when seated in the main dining room. It's a more complete list with some interesting selections that you won't be seeing on the regular dining room wine list. It's nice if you can let the wine steward know the day ahead, though, if you know the entree schedule. Saves them a run down to the other cellar area.

 

Another nice feature -- if you don't finish a bottle (yours or theirs) at dinner, and it's got the wherewithall to spend an overnight, your wine steward will be happy to store it for you until dinner the next evening. I've even had a few somewhat raw cabernets that actually benefitted from the experience.

 

My recollection is that Celebrity is charging about 1.5X retail, so they aren't sticking it to you. That said, feel free to bring along anything special to you. As an example, we like (and still have) '97 Silver Oak (Alexander), and a variety of 1990 German TBA and BA (dessert wines). Can't find anything quite like either of those on the lists.

 

If you like the idea of trying to blend you own Cabernet, and are a Captain's Club "Select" or "Elite" member, you'll get the chance to do it. Somehow, Celebrity was able to get Kendall-Jackson to supply raw Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc to do your own blending. I was either lucky or sensible enough to come up with one I really liked. Take 40% of the Napa Cab from the lower elevation, 40% from the upper (use the Somona from neither lower or higher vineyards), 15% of the Merlot and 5% of the Cab Franc. I think you'll really like the results... I'd have actually paid for a bottle of it. Frankly, it was a good deal more fun (and interesting) than the wine tastings X holds.

[akgardner1]

Can you buy a bottle of booze at a port and bring it back on to ship to drink?

[Lyn2005]

Oh, oh, you are probably going to awaken the alcohol police on this site!:)

[canderson]

Can you buy a bottle of booze at a port and bring it back on to ship to drink?

"Can"? Yes, it has been done. X rules say no.

[akgardner1]

But X doesn't have a problem bringing wine onboard?

[vlnovak]

yes you can please read post above by vlnovak for all the details

[canderson]

But X doesn't have a problem bringing wine onboard?

That is correct. They have established a standard corkage charge in the dining room as noted above. In discussions with the wine steward, it seems that they only net $5 of the $15, though -- what they'd get as their 15% tip on a $33 bottle, and we tend to be upwards of that -- so if your service is good, a nice tip at the end of the cruise might be in order.