Chef's Table Included vs. Upgrade Wines

[Melbourne Boys]

On 6/10/2022 at 8:09 AM, CCWineLover said:

We too.  We've often tried the standard and the premium to compare.

Sometimes, the standard offering is more to what we were in the mood for than the premium, for a given course, even though they were both good.  They are not always the same varietal or style.  i.e. one could be a red Bordeaux blend and the other a zinfandel.    One could be a port and the other a different style desert wine.

We liked the chance to mix and match and compare.  Viking was always more than happy to fulfill our requests.  Just ask.   Oh - and if there was a particular wine that was fabulous, they didn't mind giving another pour, including one "for the road"  !

 

We enjoy both Chef's Table AND Manfredi's.  Our recent cruise, we went to all 5 Chef's Table menus (some in our opinion were better than others.  Irony is - for us California menu was the worst and we are from California).

Couldn't help but comment on your forthcoming and past Cruises, what a wonderful recommendation for Viking Cruises, we are about to fly to Athens for our very first Viking cruise on Sky, very excited.

[CCWineLover]

2 hours ago, Melbourne Boys said:

Couldn't help but comment on your forthcoming and past Cruises, what a wonderful recommendation for Viking Cruises, we are about to fly to Athens for our very first Viking cruise on Sky, very excited.

Thank you for the nice comment!

I am sure that you will thoroughly enjoy your cruise!   But what a distance to fly!

We love traveling too and we are targeting Athens to Istanbul in 2024.  You will enjoy the Med coast - we did Rome to Barcelona.  Very much enjoyed Nice/Eze/Monte Carlo (we did the all day optional excursion), as well as Montpelier (we did the wine home/castle optional tour - fabulous for wine lovers!), and of course you can't say enough about how great Barcelona is!

I seem to remember you Melbourne boys were planning the Southern Crossing (Buenos Aires-Barcelona) at one point.  Likely you got cancelled like we did!  We rebooked for Nov 2023.  Come join!

Thoroughly enjoy Melbourne (and Australia).  Cousin in Perth so we've been way out there a couple times.  Have enjoyed our wine tastings in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Margaret River.  We like wine!

[Melbourne Boys]

On 6/14/2022 at 8:40 AM, CCWineLover said:

Thank you for the nice comment!

I am sure that you will thoroughly enjoy your cruise!   But what a distance to fly!

We love traveling too and we are targeting Athens to Istanbul in 2024.  You will enjoy the Med coast - we did Rome to Barcelona.  Very much enjoyed Nice/Eze/Monte Carlo (we did the all day optional excursion), as well as Montpelier (we did the wine home/castle optional tour - fabulous for wine lovers!), and of course you can't say enough about how great Barcelona is!

I seem to remember you Melbourne boys were planning the Southern Crossing (Buenos Aires-Barcelona) at one point.  Likely you got cancelled like we did!  We rebooked for Nov 2023.  Come join!

Thoroughly enjoy Melbourne (and Australia).  Cousin in Perth so we've been way out there a couple times.  Have enjoyed our wine tastings in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Margaret River.  We like wine!

Yes we had to cancel the South American trip three times, we do plan to revisited this again so you never know we just may see you in November next year.....😃

[duquephart]

On 6/10/2022 at 7:38 AM, Moonlion said:

And if dining at Chef's Table and you don't have the SSBP, you can upgrade to the premium wines for $25pp.

 

On our recently completed cruise, oddly enough, the premium option was never mentioned (nor was the existance of a wine list elsewhere). They know your room # going in and just automatically bring and pour whatever you are entitled to. Should you want to try anything else, or even have a cocktail first you have to stop them in their tracks. Viking is missing the boat (sorry) here by not suggesting or offering something other than what their little devices tell them. Maybe an aversion to up-selling?

[broker1217]

We always get SSBP because we like wine and having the expanded choices, as well as the 15% discount on bottles.

We usually order a nice bottle of champagne/wine early in the cruise and  make friends with the sommelier. He then recognized us and was happy to make recommendations and look after us.

If I did not have SSBP,  I would look at the included and the premium wine choices on the Chef's Table menu and decide if the premium was worth $25 to me. I am pretty sure you can decide at the table if you want to upgrade?

I am not clear on this--but possibly one of you could get the included and one could get the premium so you could both taste and compare? 

 

Ultimately, we are fortunate that Chef's Table incurs no extra charge. And if you aren't paying $20 per day for SSBP---$25 is not much of a splurge. Again--just my opinion and we love trying new wines and new food. We ate at Chef's table 4 times on our last 13 day cruise so figure that for those days we were ahead on paying for SSBP just on the savings on the premium wine upgrade.

If wine is not important to you---then maybe the included are just fine.

Edited July 21, 2022 by broker1217

[Clay Clayton]

13 minutes ago, broker1217 said:

We always get SSBP because we like wine and having the expanded choices, as well as the 15% discount on bottles.

We usually order a nice bottle of champagne/wine early in the cruise and  make friends with the sommelier. He then recognized us and was happy to make recommendations and look after us.

If I did not have SSBP,  I would look at the included and the premium wine choices on the Chef's Table menu and decide if the premium was worth $25 to me. I am pretty sure you can decide at the table if you want to upgrade?

I am not clear on this--but possibly one of you could get the included and one could get the premium so you could both taste and compare? 

 

Ultimately, we are fortunate that Chef's Table incurs no extra charge. And if you aren't paying $20 per day for SSBP---$25 is not much of a splurge. Again--just my opinion and we love trying new wines and new food. We ate at Chef's table 4 times on our last 13 day cruise so figure that for those days we were ahead on paying for SSBP just on the savings on the premium wine upgrade.

If wine is not important to you---then maybe the included are just fine.

You can elect at the table whether one Or both of you want to purchase the Premium wines. We did this on one cruise where we had a little bit of shipboard credit left from our TA.  Interestingly, for at least one of the wines, we preferred the included over the premium selection. 

[broker1217]

1 hour ago, Clay Clayton said:

You can elect at the table whether one Or both of you want to purchase the Premium wines. We did this on one cruise where we had a little bit of shipboard credit left from our TA.  Interestingly, for at least one of the wines, we preferred the included over the premium selection. 

I like that option---for $25 both people get to try both the included and premium.

It's a great learning experience for $25.