Drinking Wine On Marella Discovery

Now, let’s get something clear right at the start: this is not a guide to what sort of wine is available on Marella Discovery or any other ship owned and operated by Marella Cruises. Quite frankly, if you aren’t already aware that you can get a variety of white, rosé, red, and sparkling wines on pretty much any cruise ship sailing any ocean or sea you can think of and this is the first site you’ve hit on the quest for that information I will fall off my chair theatrically in shock. No, this is just the latest in our collection of travelogues recounting our cruise from Italy to Jordan through the Suez Canal, and this particular post covers the final day before hitting that famous man-made waterway linking the Mediterranean and Red seas, one which involves drinking wine. Lots of wine. Potentially even too much wine and, yes, I know that’s the sort of thing that might get us blacklisted from the Majestic Wines mailing list just for thinking it.

But the day did not start with wine because despite all the things you may have read on the insides of toilet doors across the world we’re not quite that bad just yet. Our upgraded drinks package on Marella Discovery meant we could follow up breakfast in the buffet with a premium coffee (or chocolate for my wife) around the atrium.

It was in this location the day before – you remember that, because you read about it here: Solar System At Sea And Dining In The Kora La Restaurant – that we’d signed up for wine-tasting and that was the sole plan for this day’s events with the expectation for the rest of another sea day on the Mediterranean being one spent in the company of our books and the odd drink or two. The friendly person you see waving in the short tilt video in the ship’s atrium below is Siegfried, the member of staff who’d signed us up for the wine-tasting and who’d been in charge of wine when we’d dined at the steakhouse a couple of evenings earlier.

We had lunch in the Snack Shack again because those fish pieces are just divine. I’m not sure that I ever took a photo of them because I was too busy eating them. We also bumped into fellow cruise bloggers Paul and Carole again where we all caught up with what we’d been doing – getting used to all that relaxing for the main part – plus any plans. They’d been taking part in quizzes and had had some success so we agreed that after our wine-tasting we might look out for them and join in.

We spent a short period back in our room enjoying the balcony and the sea air and sounds. This really is why we get balcony cabins. It’s your own space to watch and experience the world passing by, a place to sometimes feel incredibly small on a blue seascape with nothing else visible on the horizon, a place to feel invigorated without the fear that someone with back hair sporting its own ecosystem and their belly hanging over their Speedos will wander into your eyeline and spoil the moment. We will always find time to get out onto our balcony every day without fail, whether that’s to feel insignificant on the ocean’s surface or insignificant under the universe’s twinkling starlight or to let the white noise of the waves and spray and wind do everything to relax you that a spa treatment will but for far less money. But not to stand out there nude and wink suggestively at your partner still in the room because that just doesn’t work.

We headed into the upper level of the dining room where the wine-tasting took place, took our seats, and waited for wine to be poured. Siegfried then proceeded to take us through all the things you expect from a wine-tasting: how to swirl the glass, how to guess the strength of the wine, how to sniff the aromas, how to look puzzled when someone says something tastes like strawberries and leather when it clearly doesn’t, how to annoy the Chardonnay drinker at your table by remarking how all Chardonnay smells like rotting ham, etc. There were some different aspects, though, with some details spent on soil types and labelling, both of which then involved Siegfried mentioning me numerous times to all who were gathered. “Suppose Mr H, here, has set up his vineyards on acidic soil” and “Now, if Mr H had his winery in France then it might read Domaine de Monsieur H along the top” and “The sorts of vintage wine would depend on what sort of business Mr H was running” and so on. That’s what you get for being memorable.

We had a nice surprise waiting for us when we joined up with Paul and Carole for the quiz; their prize from a previous quiz and something that they had already obtained on an earlier cruise but never used: Marella Reusable Metal Straws! Ecological and practical! Well, we couldn’t refuse.

Some joint quizzing took place and we got close… but not close enough. This quizzing was accompanied by plenty of chatting and some more drinking. Paul is a Peroni person. Carole is a Sauvignon Blanc slurper. We like the heavier reds so Cabernet Sauvignon ended up in our glasses.

As you probably know already, drinks are included on Marella so bottles and glasses were never empty for long before being topped up by a friendly steward passing by. We kept on drinking and chatting. And drinking and chatting. There was another quiz in there somewhere but the drinking and chatting took place a lot. Lots of drinking and chatting. Oh, and Carole spinning around in her chair.

There came a point in the evening where we realised around six hours of drinking and chatting and occasional spinning had occurred on the back of not very much food at all. Our fellow bloggers wanted to watch a show; we wanted to get something to soak up the alcohol; we went our separate ways.

We didn’t make it to any food-dispensing location because we foolishly got some fresh air first which was enough to more-or-less finish my wife off. Fresh air is a dangerous thing when you’ve been drinking inside for a long time. I just about got her back to the room without demolishing half the corridor walls on the way and we collapsed into oblivion. You can see whether Paul and Carole had more post-drinking success than us by watching their recollection of the day’s events on the ship.

In the next part of this Marella Discovery travelogue series we’ll be transitting the Suez Canal. Expect fog. Expect flies.

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