RCI not allowing passengers to bring wine onboard?

[first timer with teens]

Let me guess..................Leo is NOT the current Mrs. Cindy??? ;)

[skandls]

Anyone going to pay $12 corkage for boone's farm, blue nun or the great sparkler cold duck? Big bad headache time.On a serious note the overpriced mediocre wine list that rccl is pushing can spoil a nice dinner for a lot of us wine drinkers. Personally I would switch to another cruise if I had to pay $35 for a $9 bottle of wine. So for the time being we will pack and schlep wine from our personal cellar. I too hope someone from rccl is reading this thread. We winos tend to spread the word about good bad and middling meals - wines -and trips.

[zachnlucy]

Let me guess..................Leo is NOT the current Mrs. Cindy??? ;)

Leo is not even the former Mrs. Cindy. I believe he walks the streets now and doesn't have any teeth left, poor fella.

[wwinfl91]

Maybe he drank too much Strawberry Hill.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[island lady]

Maybe he drank too much Strawberry Hill.

 

Have a great next cruise.

 

 

I stopped at good 'ole "Wally World" today, and could not resist a peek at the

shelf with the Boones Farm!! ;) Yup, all the flavors of the rainbow...urrppbb!! Does that bring back memories!! Yikes!! :eek:

 

Cheers!

[wwinfl91]

I will have to make a trip to "Wally World" this week and check out the rainbow and maybe pick up a bottle of Strawberry Hill for old times sake. Hopefully no flashbacks will occur.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[island lady]

I will have to make a trip to "Wally World" this week and check out the rainbow and maybe pick up a bottle of Strawberry Hill for old times sake. Hopefully no flashbacks will occur.

 

Have a great next cruise.

 

Cute!! ;)

 

You may want to stop by the pharmacy for a colorful bottle of Tumms too!!

:D

 

Cheers!

[wwinfl91]

The Tumms are probably going to be a good idea.

 

Here is an interesting related thread that talks about wine being confiscated by RCCL on boarding the ship. I figured it was related to this subject.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=157217

 

Have a great next cruise.

[ricsue]

Have you ever tried Black Box Wine? Any comments on it. I'd never heard of it. I don't drink any boxed wine, but was curious about their claims of gold and silver medal wines in boxes?

[lindnet]

I'd like to know the answer to this as well. Anybody tried it?

[LuvMyVette]

Hi Everyone:

 

This is a great thread and I hope someone at RCI will read this. I think it's extremely unfair that we have to pay for wine that is way over priced that we could purchase in a store for a lot less money. I'm debating on taking a bottle or two with me for our cruise in July but the fear is that the bottles will break and all of my clothes will be covered in red wine! What a thought!:eek:

I don't know why cruise lines makes a huge deal over this. No matter what they are still making a ton of money (excursions, casino, hair salon, massages, shops, beverages, etc.). Just think how many happy passengers there would be if we would be allowed to bring on a few bottles of wine. Maybe more spending on the ship would result in that.

C Ya!

[zachnlucy]

Have you ever tried Black Box Wine? Any comments on it. I'd never heard of it. I don't drink any boxed wine, but was curious about their claims of gold and silver medal wines in boxes?

Enquiring minds (including mine) want to know!

[Seaside2358]

I'd like to know the answer to this as well. Anybody tried it?

 

I've tried it and it isn't bad at all. If I remember correctly the box was $20.00 and it held the equivalent of 4 bottles. I had some type of white but there were other varieties as well...

[island lady]

Have you ever tried Black Box Wine? Any comments on it. I'd never heard of it. I don't drink any boxed wine, but was curious about their claims of gold and silver medal wines in boxes?

 

I am afraid I have not tried any boxed wines. I know that the Aussies came out with what they called the "bag in a box" wines years ago.

I am sure that is another way to keep wine fresh, and "no worries, mon" about corked wines (since they are sans cork).

 

I am still having a tough time grasping the new screw top fine wines. The plastic cork wines I am a big fan of.

 

I had to laugh at myself the last time I was helping to set up for a wine tasting, and while going down the line of opening about 30 bottles, I ran into one with a screw top. I had to stop, look at the bottle with a dumb look on my face with my wine key in hand, and finally laugh at my confusion.

Unfortunately I have not yet fallen in love with any of the wines with screw tops yet, but I am sure that time is coming.

 

The boxes?? I don't think I can ever get into those, no matter how many awards they may claim.

Call me a romantic, but I still love the traditional bottles with cork seals.

Besides, what would I do with all my wine openers??? ;) :D

 

Cheers!

[xpcdoojk]

I have been told by various winemakers that the screw tops are the best method to protecting wine from oxygen, but they are not readily accepted by the public and hence they still use cork and now plastic. I have had a couple of very acceptable wines with the screw top. We were at Aqua at Bellagio in Las Vegas last year, and they brought us the Argyle Pinot Noir. Here we are at an expensive exclusive restaurant drinking a screw top wine. The wine was excellent. Upon returning home I found the wine at the local Sam's club for about $17, bought several bottles. I think I still have one or two in the cellar. Sam's sold out and hasn't had them since. Argyle makes a couple of more exclusive versions of the Pinot Noir, but they have the traditional cork. Another excellent screwtop I had about a year ago, was The Jester, it was an Australian wine again in about the $20 retail price range. It was very good. An engineer friend of mine served it to us at dinner one night and his wine snob wife about had a stroke that he would dare serve guests a screwtop wine at dinner. It really was yummy.

 

Here is a little story from my dark wine drinking past. :D Our group of close friends goes white water canoeing ever May and we have tried to do this every year for about the last 14 years, usually Mother's day weekend. Anyway, the first year there were 8 of us and we did a little river that was pretty remote to a metropolitan area. We had a great day floating on the river, but by the time we got to camp (we prepare really elaborate meals at dinner in camp. I mean really elaborate cruise ship specialty restaurant elaborate.) we realized that we had consumed the entire weekends wine inventory during the float. The core group drank wine, and the outsiders decided to help us instead of drinking their beer. So upon reaching camp and realizing the dinner was filet with seafood reduction sauce, rissotto with mushrooms, appetizers was Canadian mussels and wine etc... we knew we had a problem. So, I and a buddy jump into the car and drive twenty minutes to the nearest town. The intersection in town (yes one intersection no lights) had two gas and convenience stores on opposite corners. So we went into both stores and we bought all of the wine in town that had a cork. We acquired two dusty bottles of red wine. I can only imagine how long they had been sitting on top of the beverage chiller waiting for us to come along! They did, however have a fairley complete cross section of the Boones Farm offerings!:D That is a 100% true story!:eek:

 

jc

[wwinfl91]

Good comments about the screw on cap controversy. Also appreciated the buying the only wine in the store with corks but plenty of Boones Farm available. I'm not sure what that says about our society but evidently they sold a lot more Strawberry Hill than chardonnay,

 

We are getting close to 80% against the new RCI policy. Keep voting if you haven't yet.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[bobbie0253]

Any good ideas about what to do with all those wine corks? (Besides launching them in the ocean.LOL)

 

This past Christmas I had my significant other use a drill to put hole through the ones I save and date and I made tree garland out of them and red wooden beads. It looks really cool on the tree. Any other ideas?

 

Bobbie

[dc-snoopy]

I keep a bag in my kitchen and save all my corks (real and plastic). When the bag gets full, I ask around to my friends who have kids in grade school and usually some grade school teacher will take them for some interactive art or hands-on project for the kids. One teacher bought small wooden frames and the kids made cork boards for pinning messages...one teacher used them for the "core" of Christmas ornaments, etc. It makes me feel like I'm recycling and with a very "green" Mrs Snoopy...recycling is a good thing (I'm into it...but she's even more into it).

[wwinfl91]

Those sound like some good ideas to do with the used corks. We buy wine at a local florida winery, Lakeridge, and they have a program where you can return the bottles to them rather than throwing them out which is another way to drink wine and also recyle.

 

Here is the link to their website.

 

http://www.lakeridgewinery.com/

 

Their wine probably isn't up to some of the really good wines from the USA west coast but we enjoy it.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[island lady]

Any good ideas about what to do with all those wine corks? (Besides launching them in the ocean.LOL)

 

This past Christmas I had my significant other use a drill to put hole through the ones I save and date and I made tree garland out of them and red wooden beads. It looks really cool on the tree. Any other ideas?

 

Bobbie

 

I usually end up with a bunch of wine corks from wine tastings, and samples, not to mention the wine I have at home. We tend to collect so much, that we fill up a 5 gallon bucket at times!! :eek:

 

My DH is very talented with doing craft projects with them. He has made wine cork "wreaths" plus many trivets for ourselves, friends, and family. I have 3 favorite trivets that I love, plus he made a huge picture frame with a couple hundred corks he used to frame the edge, which currently hangs in our porch with a monster blow up shot of me with a large fish....hmmm...fish and wine...nice combo!

 

Cheers!

[wwinfl91]

Sounds like your DH has managed to find a lot of creative ways to use your wine corks. I was a little surprised more people didn't contribute ideas. We were on a cruise several years ago when a lady we ate dinner with collect as many corks as she could for a friend of hers who did craft projects using them. One night our waiter brought her a big bag of corks and was she surprised.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[critterchick]

We are getting close to 80% against the new RCI policy. Keep voting if you haven't yet.

 

I don't think this is a new policy. The website has said for the past couple of years that no alcohol may be brought on board, and the cruise contract has said that they reserve the right to limit the amount of alcohol brought on board. I haven't seen many stories of people being forced to surrender their wine at embarkation.

[suzyluvs2cruise]

Have you ever tried Black Box Wine? Any comments on it. I'd never heard of it. I don't drink any boxed wine, but was curious about their claims of gold and silver medal wines in boxes?

Yes. On our last 3 cruises this is how we brought wine on board for in room consumption. It can be packed in checked luggage with little worry about breakage. The 3 litre box can also fit in your stateroom refrigerator (if you need to chill it).

 

Here's a link to an article that was in a Seattle newspaper in February.

 

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/210264_wine02.html

[wwinfl91]

Very interesting article on boxed wines from the above post. It sounds like we are behind a lot of other countries in accepting and trying it. Thanks for posting it. It would definitely be the best way to get wine onboard without worrying about bottle breakage.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[mslvp7]

Hi...

 

I always take some wine & soda with me in my checked luggage. I bag each in double plastic with a towel, then bubble wrap & rewrap in plastic & then wrap in heavy black plastic bags again. Goes right in with my clothes (which are all individually wrapped in clear plastic garment bags to reduce wrinkles. I've never had a problem.

 

And, I take a LOT of clothes with me-1-2 outfits for each day, a formal dress for each formal night & other less dressy dresses for eachl of the other nights plus jackets, accessories & additional clothes for pre/post cruise. I normally fly at least 2 planes to get to my disembarkation points.

 

I also buy bottled water in the ports & just mix them in with my purchases when I go back on the ship - never had a problem.

 

 

My husband's sister brought a few bottles on board and she was kind enough to share! LOL I personallly would not give up valuable suitcase space for a bottle of wine. A) what if it broke B) I'd rather pack another pair of shoes!!