Part 1: Cruise Lines and Wine

This is a three part series on wine aboard a cruise ship, our vacation of choice as of late.

Let's face it. Alcohol on a cruise ship is expensive. It can really drive up your bill. One reason is that it is particularly difficult to track during the cruise. As a result, you can get a big shock at the end of the cruise when you go to pay the bill.

One thing that we do is go on cruise lines that allow you to bring certain types of alcohol on board. None of the cruise lines let you bring hard alcohol, and I do not know of any that will let you bring beer (unfortunately). However, some let you bring wine on board, like Holland America and Carnival.

We often bring champagne and white wine for casual drinking in our room, and red wine for dinner. It should be noted that the cruise line will often charge you corkage at dinner. On our last cruise on Carnival, they charged $15 corkage, and on our last cruise on Holland America, they charge $18 corkage.

For us, when we bring a bottle of wine to dinner, it usually last two nights, and they have always held the half full bottle in the dining room for us for the second night. Over a seven day cruise, that adds up to between $60 and $72 for wine for dinner for the whole trip, which is not too much of a surprise when we pay the bill at the end.

The other thing that we do is we order wine in our embarkation city before hand. For instance, we sail often out of San Diego. As a result, we order our wine at BevMo, which will hold it until we pick it up there the day we embark. That way we do not have to bring wine on an airplane or a car to travel across country.

There you go. If you go on a cruise, see if you can bring wine on board. It can save you money.

A Tasting Tour of Southeastern Arizona Wine Country

Tasting wine at a winery is one of my very favorite things to do. So, when some friends of ours invited us to go on a wine tasting tour of southeast Arizona, we said, "Hell, yes!"

About six of us piled into a van, and we set out for Sonoita and Elgin, towns in southeast Arizona with vineyards interspersed. We visited Dos Cabezas, Callaghan, Sonoita Vineyards, Canelo Hills, among other wineries and vineyards. In fact, at many of them, we actually met the winemakers, which was a nice treat.

Completely by coincidence, the same day we decided to go out, there was a wine festival as Canelo Hills winery, featuring nearby wineries, and wines from another growing area, near Wilcox, Arizona. A small crowd traded red tickets with winemakers gathered in tents pouring these wines -- eight bones for six tickets, a taste a ticket.

Surprisingly, seeing that Arizona is not a wine Mecca by any stretch of the imagination, we actually found several wineries with good wines on the trip. Three stood out: Dos Cabezas, Callaghan, and Pillsbury. All of these winemakers made wines that could compete with wine grown in more traditional areas, such as California.

The weather could not have been more perfect. It was warm, but not hot. Also, the wind from the day before had died down. It was so perfect, in fact, that we had a picnic lunch at the wine festival, and washed it down with a nice wine purchased at the festival.

In many ways, it was the perfect day.

Here is a picture of Julie behind the bar at the Callaghan tasting room. We bought three wines there, including the Caitlin's, Buena Suerte, and a red dessert wine.

Here we all are having lunch at Canelo Hills Winery, where the wine festival was going on.

For our little picnic, we had the Pillsbury Roan Red, which was a perfect companion to the fruit, cheese, bread, and salami we had for lunch.

2001 Ferrari-Carano, Eldorado Noir

It has been a while. How about a wine post?

We went out to dinner with some friends the other night. Afterwards, we came over to our house for some drinks. What did we whip out? Well, we had this bottle of dessert wine sitting in our cellar for years: a black muscat called Ferrari-Carano, Eldorado Noir, 2001.


What is a black muscat? It is a low alcohol desert wine made out of red muscat grapes. It had slight tannins that you might expect from a red grape. And the flavor? Well, everyone who tasted it said the same thing: blueberries.

There you go: a wine post, for a change.

Las Vegas: Beyond the Beer

Here is a summary of what we did in Vegas, besides drink beer.

We flew out to Vegas on Thursday night, stayed all day Friday, and left Saturday afternoon -- real quick trip. Really, in essence, we had one whole day there: Friday. As I mentioned last post, we stayed at the Mirage.

As you enter the Mirage, beyond the front desk, there is a tropical garden. Here is a picture of Julie there.

Here is a picture of me leaning against a railing, next to a waterfall, in the garden area.

Julie, next to the same waterfall.

Because we were at the Mirage, we spent Friday morning wandering around that end of the strip. We'd never been to the Wynn, so we wandered over there. Like the Bellagio, another of Steve Wynn's properties, which he has since sold, it is an elegant hotel, not as gaudy as some of the other hotels on the strip. Here are a few of pictures we took there:

As you enter the Wynn, there is a tile walkway with trees and plant life on either side. Here is a picture of Julie there.

Another picture there, this time of both of us.

Julie and I, at a bar called Up Parasol, Down Parasol. Strangely enough, next to the bar, there was a bunch of large funky pillow-like umbrella thingies that moved up and down slowly. Here we are enjoying a glass of wine.

After the Wynn, as I also mentioned in a previous post, we went to the Hofbräuhaus for lunch. Since I talked about that previously, I won't cover that in detail here.

Afterward, since the Hofbräuhaus is next to the Hard Rock, we wandered over there for a bit. The music was too loud for us -- geez, I must be getting old -- so we made a wide roundabout there looking at memorabilia and hightailed it out of there. Sorry, no pics.

Back at the Mirage, after a nap, we went to Samba for dinner. Samba is a Brazilian BBQ restaurant specializing in rodizio. Bascially, rodizio is an all-you-can-eat deal, where they wander around the restaurant with various types of meat on sword-like skewers, and cut off pieces for your plate. You have a little wooden peg that sits at your table with red on one side and green on the other. Green up means bring it on. Red up means that you have had enough.

Here is a picture:

Mmmmm, meat!

After dinner, we went to Love, the Cirque du Solei Beatles show. It was amazing: acrobats in the air on trapeze and ropes, acrobats bouncing around on trampolines, acrobats on roller-blades, dancing, music, props, Yellow Submarine, Strawberry Fields. The whole thing was quite a production. Obviously, we could not take pictures of the show. However, we did takes some pics outside:

Julie, near the entrance to the Love theater.

There were some funky colored lights on the wall and floor on the way to the theater too.

After the show we went to Revolution, a Beatles themed club at the Mirage. It was not worth it. They played mostly bass-heavy dance remixes, not the Beatles, like you'd expect. We also spent like 36 bones on two drinks, one for each of us, and a little tiny bottle of water -- outrageous.

That reminds me: Vegas has gotten expensive. Everything is way overpriced. You just can't look at the bill when you sign your life away. It just is not the cheap getaway that it used to be.

The next day, after breakfast, we flew back home -- like I said, real quick trip. We didn't even stick one quarter in a single slot machine.

BLT Burger, Mirage, Las Vegas

Why the hell am I blogging about a burger place on a beer blog? Well, this burger place had a damn fine beer selection. That's why.

Basically, we had this late flight into Vegas. When we finally got to our hotel, the Mirage, and got unpacked, it was after 11 pm. We really wanted to have a drink before we crashed out.

We first went to this wine bar in the hotel: closed. However, they recommended that we try this burger place in the hotel called BLT Burger, claiming that they had decent drink selections, in addition to beef patties on buns, and they were open late.


What surprised me about the place, when we got there, was the beer selection. They has a huge variety of Belgian beers, including Hoegaarden, Chimay Cinq Cents, Lindemans Framboise, Duvel, and Westmalle Trappist Tripel. What surprised me even more is what they had on tap. I mean, who has Hoegaarden and Lindemans on tap? Crazy! They had other European imports as well, such as Schnieder Weiss, and Pilsner Urquel. On flip side, they had white trash beers in a can too, like Schlitz, and Pabsts Blue Ribbon. They had everything in between, from Bud, to obscure beers like Abita Turbo Dog.

Here is the beer part of the menu. Click to enlarge.

Even more surprising was this: The European beers were even offered in their traditional glasses! I had a Chimay in a Chimay glass. I had a Duvel in a Duvel glass.

Here is a Duvel in a Duvel glass.

Here I am enjoying the Duvel in the Duvel glass.

The whole experience was a pleasant surprise. Who would have thought that from a burger joint?

I enjoyed it so much that I thought, "I've got to blog about this!"

And, so I did.

Hofbräuhaus, Las Vegas Style

Las Vegas is a place where they try and reproduce experiences from around the world. You can go to Paris, New York, Venice, and Egypt, among other places, all in the same city. Did you know you can also experience Munich, in the most beer related way possible? That is what Hofbräuhaus, Las Vegas, is all about. This is what the Hofbräuhaus, Las Vegas, website says: "It’s the only faithful reproduction of the original Hofbräuhaus München in the world."

According to the Hofbräuhaus München website, Hofbräuhaus München was founded in 1589 by Wilhelm V, the Duke of Bavaria. Apparently, he was dissatisfied with the beer of Munich, and wished that it was more like the beer of Einbeck. He therefore recruited the brewmaster of Geisenfeld Monastery, Heimeran Pongraz, to build and run a new brewery: Hofbräuhaus.

The history of the brewery and beer hall has been ongoing, playing a key role in the founding of Munich's famous beer festival: Oktoberfest. According to Wikipedia, it also has a dark past during World War II and Nazi Germany, being a place where Hitler and his goons hung out, and it eventually got bombed to kingdom come. The place even has a famous song written about it: "oans, zwoa, g'suffa" (translates: "one, two, chug").

This is the place that is reproduced in Vegas, and this is the place we visited. Here are a few pictures with my impressions:

The Hofbräuhaus is off the strip, sitting diagonal across the street from the Hard Rock. This banner was hung off the wall in the bier garten.

The architecture was quite interesting. It had high ceilings that were arched like a cathedral, with wooden tables and benches below.

Julie and I shared a schnitzel and some pretzels. Pictured here is the schnitzel plate which was as big as my head.

They had really big beers. I had the dunkel.

I mean really big beers.

Did I mention that the beers were really big?

Was it a completely authentic experience? In a word: no. It was no more authentic than the Paris hotel and casino is to Paris, France, no more authentic than the Venetian is to Venice, Italy. Like everything in Las Vegas, it was...well...Las Vegas.

Granted, there were no slot machines (thank God). Three things, however, come to mind about the authenticity. First, our waitress, though dressed in traditional German dress, was very, very Asian, and in fact spoke with a heavy Asian accent. The whole getup was a little silly and out of place. Second, I peeked into the bier garten to find fake trees and a ceiling that was painted to look like the sky, with clouds -- a little cheesy. The final thing happened in the gift shop. There I asked, "How much is the stiefel?"

"I'm sorry?" the girl behind the counter responded.

"The stiefel. How much is it?"

"The what?"

"The boot! How much is the glass boot?"

"Oh, that. Seventy-nine dollars."

Obviously, she did not know what a stiefel was.

There you go: Munich in Las Vegas.