We're on a boat to nowhere

To paraphrase that famous 80's band Talking Heads we've been on a boat to nowhere. P&O run three day 'food and wine' cruises from various cities within Australia and New Zealand. Our ship, the Pacific Jewel, left from Darling Harbour in Sydney. Your food and wine cruise is a unique beast. There is very little travel, no foreign ports and no exciting opportunities to experience new and wonderful cultures. Nope, there's just food, alcohol and the odd onboard activity thrown in for good measure.

So you might think that it all sounds a bit pointless. Not so. When engaged in the serious enjoyment of food and wine we'd argue that excessive movement, especially rolling or wobbly, can only interfere with that enjoyment. 

The reason for taking part in this 'pointless' activity was to celebrate a couple of 50th birthdays by sampling New Zealand and Hunter Valley wines. The cruise also presented the opportunity to hear from industry heavyweights like Bruce Tyrrell (Tyrrells Wines) and Duane Roy (Glandore Estate). In case we got sick of non-Tasmanian wine there was whiskey tasting, martini making and beer appreciation.

Think of a food and wine cruise as a three day dinner party with 1900 of your closest friends.

Discreet erotic massage ...

Getting to the cruise meant travelling to Sydney, which of course meant air travel. While it's a technical marvel, air travel involves far too much waiting around. You often spend more time getting to, standing around in, and getting away from the airport as you do flying to your destination. People say "oh it's only an hour and a half to Sydney". No it's not, it's more like 3 hours, more if you are delayed for 'technical reasons'.

While Sydney isn't as relaxed or comfortable as Melbourne it does have it's good points. One of these is thoughtful erotic massage parlour owners. The hotel we stayed in the night before the cruise was located near the docks in Darling Harbour. This part of town caters for a wide range of 'needs'. For example, going for a wander we passed ethnic restaurants, over priced clothing boutiques and 3 or 4 massage parlours. One had a little notice saying "there is a rear entrance to ensure the discretion of our clients". Thoughful you would have to agree.

The only problem was it was written on a small piece of card that was pinned to the front door. To read it you had to be about 2 inches from said door. No one is going to believe you just stopped to read the note (you're right I don't believe you - Ed).

Popular or what!?

The food and wine cruise is obviously a popular pastime. We entered the embarkation marquee and saw the sorts of lines that would make Heathrow at Christmas time proud. The thought of lining up for so long was pretty daunting but through sheer luck we had booked a mini-suite and this meant our own priority check-in. Being shown past a couple of hundred people gave us an insight to the delights of VIP treatment. We liked it and for a little while our favourite words in the English language were 'preferred' and 'priority'!

We say for a little while because once on board our former VIP status seemed to melt away like the charms and career of a child movie star. Our naivety and lack of experience with onboard life cost us dearly in those critical first few hours. While we stumbled around looking for our cabin and getting used to aft, port and bow the cruising veterans were booking out the best restaurants and snaffling up places in the most interesting activities.

Our cause wasn't helped by the fact that many of the staff didn't seem to understand how things worked either. We tried to book for the degustation dinner and got four different answers from four different staff about how that was done. It quickly took on the element of a farce as one of the crew directed us, and some other passengers, to a phone that didn't work. A better example of 'milling about in utter confusion' you couldn't have imagined.

The Barnacle Menace

While all this was going on we didn't seem to be going anywhere. All up there was a 7 hour delay in our departure. The reasons for this were never clearly explained but the word on the decks was that the 'authorities' and crew were dealing with some barnacles that had selfishly attached themselves to the hull. You have to marvel at the ability of a small crustacean to reduce a major feat of engineering to a big piece of metal just sittin' in the water. Once this was done all we had to do was to wait for the bats to migrate to their feeding grounds and we'd be on our way. There were a lot of bats flying overhead for a while which was a pretty spectacular sight.

All of this drama was lost on the passengers who were too busy drinking.

We were told that delays of this type are not that rare. We heard a story from a couple of fellow passengers about a food and wine cruise in which the boat didn't leave the dock at all and hardly anyone noticed. Apparently some enterprising young Aussies, unhappy with the size of their dinner, took advantage of the situation and ordered takeaway pizza.

Where's the wine?

Our first priority was to sample the wine. Since the cruise wouldn't leave Australian territorial waters we were stuck paying full "ha you can't go anywhere else" retail prices. So keen are P&O that you purchase their booze that they x-ray all the luggage and confiscate any illegal alcohol. What's more you will mostly be fed bulk wine. In our case there was a lot of Tyrrells and Cloudy Bay. There is some premium wine for sale but it is in small quantity and hideously expensive.

So food and wine cruising is about quaffing and once you reconcile yourself to this reality you relax and get stuck in. Fortunately we are quaffer fans and have a knack for finding great tasting gems amongst this unfashionable segment of the industry. So it was that we tasted a very tidy pinot cheapy (Tomich Hill) and an eminently bearable sav blanc (St Clare).

Service, service everywhere but here

The shambles of our boarding wasn't the only service glitch we experienced. We had dinner one night and it took an hour to get a glass of water. More time passed before we could order our wine. It looked like we were going to finish our meal without seeing a drop of grape nectar (that's what hell is like - Ed). Meanwhile at all the tables around us sat happy, well fed and watered punters being waited on by enthusiastic and efficient staff. The next night in the same restaurant saw the complete opposite experience. Maybe we just got the school experience kid.

If you think this was an isolated incident or that we had done something to cause the problem you'd be wrong. Talking to other passengers we heard that the short break cruises regularly suffer from these sorts of problems. "They only put on a skeleton crew" we were told.

We're not in a position to know if that's true or not and you couldn't fault the individual staff, they worked their butts off frankly. It appears its the systems that seem to be problematic.

As an example all the bars offer cocktails which take a relatively long time to prepare but most people don't drink them. It was a common sight to see many beer and wine drinkers having to wait while the minority cocktail drinkers got their orders filled. Why no separate service areas? One delay was so long that we got our drinks for free. Is this some twisted attempt to stop people from drinking too much?

This hit and miss factor also infected the food. The degustation meal on the final night was nothing short of brilliant. All the courses were delicious and by the end of the 7th one you felt very satisfied. Contrast that with inedible sausages, soggy muffins and cold eggs at breakfast. You come away feeling confused and a little peeved. P&O are capable of extraordinary quality but they really need to work on their consistency.

So is it worth it?

Overall it was fun and there were some real highlights. The warm weather and the charms of Jervis Bay come to mind. There were also a range of activities that appealed to everyone's tastes. The martini tasting session, for example,  had the female members of the winepunter ensemble in a tizz of delight.

Special mention also has to go to the whiskey tasting. Tassie's very own Sullivan's Cove single malt whiskey covered itself in glory while the other high end whiskey's were revelation. They smelt and tasted like smoked honeyed bacon and left a warm inner glow that has to be experienced to be believed. Most of the hundreds of dollars spent on alcohol on this cruise went on scotch (so are we starting whiskypunters now? - Ed).

Lastly there was real life drama as Michelle saved the day by reuniting a tearful lost child with her parents who were momentarily parently challenged and distracted by the onboard casino.

But P&O have really missed the boat (lame pun alert -Ed) on this one. These short break cruises are designed to be an introduction to this type of travel. Punters are supposed to be so impressed that they sign up for longer and more expensive trips. Given that, you'd think P&O would pull out all the stops.

This particular cruise however couldn't decide if it was going to be brilliant or complete rubbish so it did a bit of both. This is a real problem. Imagine going to a wine tasting and finding a label whose wines had wildly inconsistent quality. Would you go back? Would you order a couple of cases? Not likely.

It's not that we wasted our money or didn't have a good time it's just that the cruise could have been so much better if there weren't so many inconsistencies around service and food quality. If you're going to have a cruise for food and wine lovers you are going to have passengers with high expectations of that food and wine.

If we decide to venture forth on the high seas again we'll be looking for options other than P&O.

What did we learn?

Maybe you think our food and wine cruise review is flawed. Maybe you think we are a bunch of grumpy old people who spend too much time worrying about the little things. Maybe you just want to go on a cruise so there!

Well if you are going to go anyway maybe we should pass on a few tips to make the experience better:

Don't head for the nearest bar and consume three bottle of wine as soon as you get on board. Do as the veterans do, rush around and book everything and anything. Even if you don't end up going to something. Half the places in the whiskey tasting were empty thanks to the no shows. Actually this was fantastic because we got to drink their tastings.

Read everything you can about your cruise before you arrive. Scour the cruise website. Don't expect your travel agent or the cruise staff to tell you everything you need to know. P&O have a 'cruise personaliser' which needs to be completed in order for you to receive your luggage tags and other documentation. We had to ring the call centre a couple of times before we were told why the personaliser was important.

This need for research carries over to when you arrive on board. Again read all the documentation in your cabin. Read the daily newsletter. This will let you know things like when afternoon tea is served. If you don't by the time the word on the decks gets to you that a stash of hot scones exists not only will they all be gone but the serving area will be deserted. You'll also know other critical pieces of information like meal times and how to book particular restaurants.

Make the effort to explore all the decks so that you know how to get to all those bars and restaurants they talk about in the daily newsletter. Some of the directions in the ship's documentation refer to words like 'aft', these make more sense once you find places. 

It's worth going for a wander through the main entertainment areas around 5pm in any case. You'll find all sorts of activities going on. Karaoke, quizzes and singers whose lack of talent make you wonder how they got the gig. One lady reminded us of the Cafe owner's wife in Allo Allo. Unfortunately we didn't have any cheese to stuff in our ears. 

If you are going to eat at the buffet restaurant have a wander around before you pick up your tray. Not only is this easier but you're less likely to annoy other passengers as you stumble around jabbing your elbows into their bodies and food. You can also identify what you want to eat. Don't you hate it when you're walking back to your table with a full plate and you notice other people have nicer food. Thinking "damn I didn't know you could have that" reveals poor planning, not a problem with the cruise.

Pick the right boat. The Pacific Jewel didn't have a deck that allowed passengers to walk right around the boat. Going on a cruise when you can't get to the pointy end just seems wrong somehow (maybe they're sick of everyone doing their Titanic bit - Ed).

Finally a word about the wines we tried. As quaffers they were very good. In fact we would even go as far as to say that Glandore Estate is, along with Piggs Peake, a must visit cellar door if you ever find yourself in the Hunter Valley. But you still come away with the pleasant realisation that Tassie wines are real honest to goodness premium wines and maybe the folk from the Hunter should head south to see how it's really done. 

What do you think? Send us a comment