Wine, cheese and the arts on board Spirit of Adventure

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Lesley Bellew had to drag her husband kicking and screaming on their first cruise. She compromised with a six-day tour, rather than 14 nights, and lived to tell the tale.

As the sun was going down on the sleepy River Seine, so was the wine on the top deck of superyacht Spirit of Adventure. She was navigating her way to Bordeaux, via the Loire, so it seemed only right to partake in some victuallers’ homework before bedtime.

Appearance, nose and structure were all considered as we worked our way through the bottles specially selected by Clare Blackler, formerly of Tunbridge Wells, who now runs a wine school in Edinburgh. Clare’s enthusiasm was contagious and she not only invited her eager ‘trainees’ to smell, swish and sample the wine, but describe what flavours they could taste.

"Pineapple", "peaches", "Parma Violets", "sherbert"... unperturbed by the lack of sophisticated palates she persevered, coaxing and encouraging, but noting sparse use of the spittoon.

While we were knocking back the plonk, an informal, yet first-class lesson in the art of wine appreciation was under way. We grasped an understanding of tannins, got the gist of why organic wines still need to use sulphur dioxide and, importantly, learned what to pay for a decent bottle without going overboard, so to speak.

"If you can’t stretch to Pouilly Fumé, another wine from the Loire, Chateau de Valmer’s Vouvray, is a wonderful, full-bodied white," Clare told her willing apprentices without a hint of the snobbery. The Vouvray proved a favourite, so we emptied the bottle and made a note to get some in when we got home.

On to a red Bordeaux, Chateau Lamothe Cissac Cru Bourgeois. With the moon now climbing into the sky and stars definitely in our eyes, we were getting the knack of this – we could smell the leather of a gentlemen’s club, some blackcurrant and tobacco and er, did someone say Spangles?

Buoyed by our new-found knowledge we retired to the bar only to get caught up in the evening quiz. We flunked, but nobody seemed to care, we just raised our glasses to absent brains.

That more or less summed up the Spirit of Adventure – not the lack of grey matter – but the sense of fun among passengers and a distinct enthusiasm to learn, learn, learn everything about the places they planned to visit and take in the heart and history, as well as the obvious gastronomic delights of every destination.

Although this was a vineyards of France and Iberia river cruise, it was a matter of choice whether you wanted to venture into the countryside, visit chateaux or cities, flop on to a lounger or take a bike off-ship once in the port.

New-found holiday friends visited a farm in Normandy where they drank cider that had been aged in an old calvados barrel and scoffed copious amounts of cheese. Our mouths watered but they, too, drooled over our visit to Monet’s garden where the deep pink and burgundy heads of giant dahlias had bowed their heads to us in the late summer sunshine. You see, it wasn’t just a booze cruise.

Inspired by Giverny, a few of us joined the watercolours class to learn how to paint the artist’s waterlily pond and bridge. Much to the amusement of fellow ‘impressionists’ mine was more swamp than Seurat and, for the rest of the cruise, it seemed every other passenger would stop to ask if my painting had dried out.

The Spirit, as the regular passengers call her, is more homely than hotel but there’s no shortage of spit and polish. The crew love their ship (an informant told me they were paid better than on other cruise lines) and it was fascinating to watch one of the duty managers meticulously clean the ice cream machine with a toothbrush at the close of lunch. Food poisoning was not an option.

If you want bingo, bling and clubbing, the Spirit will not be for you. There are movie nights, sometimes a guest opera singer and a brilliant celeb Ready, Steady, Cook demo, but that’s about the liveliest you’ll get.

A small gym was, allegedly, well used, but downtime on a sun lounger seemed the most popular sport.

Whatever you want to do, customer care is No 1 on the Spirit. Nothing is too much trouble. You are waited on hand and foot – you couldn’t even get away with grabbing a quick plate of salad from the buffet without a crew member offering to carry it to your table and putting out the other arm for you to hold. Eek, a bit too much for me, but this was customer care with a capital C.

The wine list was not only long but well priced because large quantities can be bought while the Spirit travels all over the world – its most expensive wine, a Chilean Puente Alto 2005, was £45, cheaper than a UK supermarket.

Our last port of call was Bilbao. We woke to see the twinkling blue Med and ate our breakfast on deck while watching for dolphins. At the port we dashed ashore to maximise our time and had time to explore Frank Gehry’s mighty Guggenheim and, just down the road, the Museum of Fine Arts, bursting with treasures by El Greco, Gauguin and Bacon.

We ran out of time to see the maritime museum but settled for with a mooch about the old quarter of town and a swift half in the 100-year-old Irvra tapas bar. We watched families come out of church, fathers with children buying flowers, elderly ladies arm in arm, lovers walking the dog and raised a glass to our sunshine day.

Back on ship for our farewell drinks, Mr ‘I would rather gouge out my eyes than go on a cruise’ said: "Do you know what? I really wish we had gone for the 14-day trip. I am just getting into this." Man overboard.

FACTFILE: The MV Spirit of Adventure’s 14-night Rivers and Wines of France and Iberia cruise departs on August 19, 2010 and costs from £2,459 per person. This includes travel to the ship and from the returning airport, return flight, four meals a day plus snacks, excursions, shuttle buses, tips, travel insurance and cancellation cover.

There is a guarantee of no surcharges and that the value of any reduction in the price will be passed to passengers who have booked either in the form of a higher grade cabin or other added-value benefit Visit www.spiritofadventure.co.uk or call 0800 300 432.

...and finally

The beauty of the Spirit is that she is more private yacht than cruise ship. With 300 passengers and 200 staff she can call at smaller ports.

A case in point was Bordeaux. As we prepared to dock at Port de la Lune, everyone was on deck to take in the phenomenal sight of a seemingly endless facade of 18th-century buildings lining the curve of the Garonne (the region escaped Hitler’s attention so is very much intact).

An overnight stay at this Unesco World Heritage site meant time to tour the city and, as well as the culture, the much-worshipped golden triangle of designer stores. We missed the trip to Saint Emilion and regretted that – particularly as our fellow passengers regaled the story of the chateau being so pristine "it looked as if the fairies dusted it every day". (Not sure how much of the red stuff they had consumed).

In the evening we took a walk along the riverbank, alive with informal music gigs. We treated ourselves to a meal but, with such fine service and fare on board, we learned not to bother next time.

In fact, the Spirit’s chef was hopping on and off ship as much as the passengers to top up supplies and, on one raid, he secured 60 kilos of Roquefort and some serious wine.

Tuesday, March 09 2010

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