World Wine Tour and Wine/Food Pairing Workshops

[lauriedun]

Would love to hear thoughts/reviews on either of these experiences if anyone has done them!

[bikerunner]

There fun, if you never done them before great to go to.  The wines are nothing special, but they do give you experience in trying ones you usually wouldn't try or get.  I go to a round 1 prie fixe dinner a month with friends and always enjoyed the matching of wines with the food.  

[LB_NJ]

We did both on our last cruise on Constellation last year.

 

We enjoyed both.

 

How good the food pairing one is depends on who is running it.

 

The world wine tour has multiple stations, so it is less dependent on the individual presenters.

 

The wines were OK on each event, however not top of the line.

 

It really depends on what you want to get out of the event.

 

The way they ran the world wine tour lets you taste a fairly large number of wines and tends to be a fun event, not very serious.  They set up a few (3 or 4) stations with maybe 4 wines each and you walk around and taste samples of each wine. If I remember correctly, they have a nice number of snacks to eat while you are tasting the wines.  Not sure how they are running the event these days.

 

The food pairing event was a bit more serious.  You sit down at tables and there are maybe 4 or so wines and a small plate with different foods.  The instructor then has you pair each wine with a different food to see how the food and wine interact. Interesting if you have never done it before.

[thebutlerdidit]

45 minutes ago, LB_NJ said:

How good the food pairing one is depends on who is running it.

 

The food pairing event was a bit more serious.  You sit down at tables and there are maybe 4 or so wines and a small plate with different foods.  The instructor then has you pair each wine with a different food to see how the food and wine interact. Interesting if you have never done it before.

 

What sort of foods do they pair with the wines? Tiny nibbles? An olive, a piece of chocolate, a cheese cube sort of pairing?

 

[LB_NJ]

21 minutes ago, thebutlerdidit said:

Tiny nibbles? An olive, a piece of chocolate, a cheese cube sort of pairing?

 

Yes.  Small things. Sweet, sour, chocolate, fatty (cheese), etc.  To see how the taste of the food affects the taste of the wine. Eg, red with chocolate, etc.

If you have never been to this type of wine tasting before it can be instructive if you have been before not sure if you will learn anything new.

[HskrCrsr]

1 hour ago, LB_NJ said:

We did both on our last cruise on Constellation last year.

 

We enjoyed both.

 

How good the food pairing one is depends on who is running it.

 

The world wine tour has multiple stations, so it is less dependent on the individual presenters.

 

The wines were OK on each event, however not top of the line.

 

It really depends on what you want to get out of the event.

 

The way they ran the world wine tour lets you taste a fairly large number of wines and tends to be a fun event, not very serious.  They set up a few (3 or 4) stations with maybe 4 wines each and you walk around and taste samples of each wine. If I remember correctly, they have a nice number of snacks to eat while you are tasting the wines.  Not sure how they are running the event these days.

 

The food pairing event was a bit more serious.  You sit down at tables and there are maybe 4 or so wines and a small plate with different foods.  The instructor then has you pair each wine with a different food to see how the food and wine interact. Interesting if you have never done it before.

 

We also did both on a cruise last year, and LB_NJ summed up our experience rather well. The only thing I would add is to get to the food pairing early so you can get a central table, close to where the instructor might speak. We were on the periphery and a noisy group really interfered with our ability to hear the instructor.