DAY 10 WELCOME TO ST. LUCIA

All we can say is wow!.  Last evening we went to The Vintage Room with friends Bob and Glo, their daughter and son-in-law and two friends from their home town.  We had an absolutely wonderful time. We were there for about three and one-half hours and not only enjoyed a wide range of wine paired with some very delicious foods but we learned a great deal about wine, including the wines that we were enjoying.

As background we had only been to The Vintage Room on one previous cruise, in November of 2011.  On that cruise Keith was on a trivia team that as part of Crystal Cruises 20 year anniversary celebration won and each of the team members got to bring one guest for a complimentary night at the Vintage Room.

The Vintage Room offers a very special dining experience where very special food items are paired with wines.  One can sign up for the room (there is a cost for this) and they will be placed in a group to share this experience on one of the evenings of the cruise.  The other option is to book an exclusive Vintage Room experience and to decide who will attend for one set price whether you have one person attend or up to fourteen people on this ship.  On the sister ship the Crystal Symphony up to twelve people can attend.   The fewer the people, the pricier the wines that are served as whether there is one or fourteen people the total cost for the exclusive Vintage Room is all the same.

Six of the eight of us met with the Head Sommelier, Bart Dufour ,  a few days ago to select the menu for the evening and to go over the wines that would be served.  Ironically, Bart is the Head Sommelier who oversaw The Vintage Room when we were on the Crystal Symphony and moved over to the Serenity earlier this year.  We actually chose food items from three recommended menus but we could have selected other items not on the list and we went with Bart's recommendations for wine.  We easily reached consensus on the food items and the wines.  Bart also coordinates all of this with the executive chef for the Crystal Serenity.

We are not wine snobs by any means.  While we have significantly increased our knowledge over the years and a lot of the credit goes to our cruising with Crystal Cruises as well as others who have given us  excellent advice (much thanks to Dick W. and to a few other selected individuals), along with our own experiences on land, we realize there is much to learn in this area.  We also realize that wine is about personal preference and that a low price wine can be much more pleasing that say an overrated high price wine.

We arrived a little before the start time of  7:00 PM and spoke with Bart for a few minutes.

We all began with a flute of wine to kickoff this special evening.  Knowing there would be much to taste we only had a portion of the flute but really enjoyed the champagne.   A group photo is also taken.    As a memory of the evening we each receive a copy of the group photograph and the menus which include explanations of each wine.

We do pace ourselves and we drank a portion of most of the wines and truly savor its smell and taste with each pairing.  That way we do not need to be escorted to our room.  With that said, it is a great opportunity to do this on the ship where there is no pressure to drive oneself home.

We will explain a lot more about what we experienced with the photos that follow.

What we believe says it all is that at the end of the evening, Chris, who does know a lot about wine, and who has attended many more wine dinners like this on land than any of us, said that the overall explanation of the wines, and the wines themselves along with the food pairings was the best wine dinner he had ever attended.

For us, it was an incredible evening.  We thoroughly enjoyed the group we were with and between the outstanding job done by Bart, along with the elegant service of those serving each course, along with the delicious food and wine and the way they were paired allowed us to make wonderful memories that will truly last a lifetime.

The evening began as we  took the elevator down to the Vintage Room as Anne Marie was wearing very high heel shoes.  Keith tried to take a photo of ourselves using the mirror of the elevator.

Welcome to The Vintage Room

We didn't drink all of the wine in this cabinet.

The table is set in preparation for The Vintage Room Experience.  On the table are menus and detailed descriptions of each wine.

We were the first to arrive to The Vintage Room.

Head Sommelier Bart Dufour with Anne Marie

We had a lot of fun with everyone.  This included Bob and Glo on our side of the table, and their
son in-law and daughter, Bill and Diane and their hometown friends Chris and Johnette who are directly on the opposite side of the table from us.  Yes, it was boy girl, boy girl.

Each wine was paired with a special food item.   After we had a welcome champagne the first pairing was Pan-Seared Sea Scallops paired with a Puligny-Montrachet, Etienne Sauzet, Montrachet, Burgundy 2008 wine.

Next pairing was Lobster Thermidor with Chardonnay, ACVS, Talley Vineyard, Arroyo Grande, Santa Rosa 2006.

Third pairing was Sun-Driet Tomato Crusted Black Cod with a Gevrey-Chambertin, Vielles Vignes, Serafin Pere & Fils, Cote de Nuits, Burgundy 2004

Next Pairing was Duo of Beef of Grilled Wagyu Filet Mignon & Short Rib which was paired with a Chateau Lascombes, Second Growth, Margaux, Bordeaux 2008 wine and also a Cabernet Sauvignon, Quella, Bond, Napa Valley 2006 wine.  You could cut the short rib with just your fork.  The Bond wine was truly amazing.

Next course was a Selection of Artisanal Cheeses served with various crackers and breads.

The dessert was a Lemon Martini which was Lemon Curd with Cookie Crust and Buttermilk Ice Cream which was paired with a Trockenbeerenauslese, Grand Cuvee No. 6 Kracher, Burgenland, Austria 2000
dessert wine.  The dessert wine was also amazing.

Also, Cognac Truffles were offered along with coffee, but are not shown in the photo.

This photo shows the champagne along with all of the wines we enjoyed last evening, with the exception of the dessert wine.

As we mentioned, this was the second time we have done The Vintage Room and both times were with Head Sommelier Bart Dufour.  He not only did an outstanding job with all of the selections and coordinating all of the details, but his explanation of the food and the wines were just fabulous.  He was able to cover a wide array of items including how to view the colors of each wine, what the colors mean, smelling each wine, and finally how to taste each wine.  He also covered a lot of interesting facts about each wine we were drinking.  He also gave us a lot of good advice from the selection of wines, to getting them ready to be poured to how to pour wine.

Our favorite of the wines was the last one which was the Cabernet Sauvignon by Bond.  We asked Bart how much this retails for on the ship.  We learned the price is $400.00 per bottle on the ship and actually because of Crystal's relationship with Bond over the year the price is actually less than what one would pay at a wine store where it would likely retail for around $450.00 per bottle.  After Keith smelled the wine he knew we would like this one and he loved it.  Knowing that we would like this one, whereas one bottle was opened for each tasting, Bart had decanted two bottles of this wine.

While we certainly would not purchase a bottle of this for ourselves on land and at sea (unless we won the lottery), this is part of what makes the experience so very interesting.

We learned that the winery that produces one of the white wines we had (Chardonnay) only produced 2,000 bottles each year and only 10% of them are available as the rest is mainly sold to very large hotels and special restaurants.

At the end of the evening we thanked Bart for coordinating a perfect Vintage Room experience for each of us and we also thanked the wait staff for also making this very special for us.

We thought we would also post the menus from last evenings dinner in the Main Dining Room.  The them was the Neptune Dinner.

We slept well last night.  We know you are asking was that due to the rocking of the ship that we often mention or was that due to the wine.  We will split the difference and attribute it to both but the rocking of the ship is likely the major reason as it normally is.

Keith was up early and we each worked out as we normally do before breakfast and then enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in our room.

We arrived to St. Lucia by around 6:30 AM.  This is our second time to St. Lucia so we didn't do a tour.

When we first arrived to St. Lucia it was drizzling but by the time we left the ship the rain had stopped and the sun eventually came out.

As we were making our way down the gangway of the ship we saw that the ship photographers were already on the pier taking photos of passengers.  We thought we would give them a chance to post so Keith asked them if the would like to pose for a photo and we said that copies for purchase would be available later in the day.  Of course we had to reciprocate by letting them take a photo of us as well.

The challenge when it comes to walking around this area is that often many of the sidewalks are either crowded with locals and/or visitors and in other cases taxis literally park on the sidewalk making it dangerous to walk b foot.

There were four ships in port so we walked over to the dock on the other side from where we were docked to look at the two cruise ships over there.  It also gave us a nice view of the Crystal Serenity.

We stopped at a nearby market and walked around for a little while. 

While we have seen signs at many places around the world asking people to refrain from smoking it is not often that the sign also includes a request to not to smoke.

We returned to the ship about an hour.

As we were heading back to the pier for a second time, we ran into Dave and had a nice conversation and then we all saw Gary and spoke for a little while.  We had dined with Dave and Gary in Prego on Christmas Day.

Since this is our second time here we didn’t go back in the afternoon. 

We enjoyed lunch at the Lido Café where we each had a salad entrée.

Anne Marie walked in the afternoon and Keith played Paddle Tennis.  Anne Marie also went to see the movie titled “the Help” which is about an aspiring author during the civil right movement of the 1960’s who decided to write a book detailing the African-American maid’s point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.  She loved the movie.  


At the same time Keith played a couple of hours of Paddle Tennis and then enjoyed a nice conversation with Bob and Chris.


There was a sail away party as we left St.Lucia.  This evening we will have dinner in the Crystal Dining Room.

TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY.....

“Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” – Joan Collins

Keith and Anne Marie