Bar menus/prices Queen Victoria

[Se1lad]

6 hours ago, majortom10 said:

Depends what you drink and what bar. If you are a beer drinker the choice in Brodie's or similar on P&O are far superior, far cheaper and far more choice than any of the bars on any Cunard ship even including Golden Lion. Not everyone wants or can afford £20 cocktails.

Most cocktails when you add the tip come to round $15 - which currently works out as under £12.  If I was comparing Cunard to a land based hotel I’d put it in the mid to high end 4 star bracket - cocktails would probably cost more in the hotel bar, so I don’t think the prices are unreasonable.

[Host Hattie]

33 minutes ago, edq said:

Thanks - the bar menu posted at the top was very helpful but doesn’t have the bottled wine choices and prices for the main dining room - it has the wine by the glass.  I was trying to see if anyone might have had the bottled wine list.   I believe they used to have their own labelled wine which was always nice and tended to be a bit less expensive.  

There's a wine list in this thread 

 

 

 

 

 

[exlondoner]

Thank you, HH.

[D&N]

5 hours ago, Host Hattie said:

There's a wine list in this thread 

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure the latest one is there or not. There was an update last August to the one I photographed:

https://www.cunard.com/content/dam/cunard/my-voyage/pdfs/qm/qm_wine_list_aug_2022a.pdf

Edited July 9, 2023 by D&N

[edq]

48 minutes ago, D&N said:

Not sure the latest one is there or not. There was an update last August to the one I photographed:

https://www.cunard.com/content/dam/cunard/my-voyage/pdfs/qm/qm_wine_list_aug_2022a.pdf

Thanks very much.  That is perfect.  

[seasickphil]

48 minutes ago, D&N said:

Not sure the latest one is there or not. There was an update last August to the one I photographed:

https://www.cunard.com/content/dam/cunard/my-voyage/pdfs/qm/qm_wine_list_aug_2022a.pdf

Looking at the vintages of the white wines, i would think/hope that the list is not the present one.

[D&N]

3 hours ago, seasickphil said:

Looking at the vintages of the white wines, i would think/hope that the list is not the present one.

Do you have some examples of what you mean?

[WantedOnVoyage]

Ah, some miss the old three shilling "very dry martini" do they not? The one you could have c. 1953 in the RMS QUEEN ELIZABETH's Smoking Room.... except by my calculations, 3/ (36 p) in 1953 today is worth oh about £12.85 or $16.45 (!)

 

And as an expert on martini consuming on today's Cunard, that is about $4.50 MORE than a small martini costs with a choice of eight or more premium gins aboard QV (this May). I had the $12 Grills Drinks package and never spent a farthing extra. 

 

But if you want a trip down memory lane, here's the whole bars list for First Class RMS QUEEN ELIZABETH 70 years ago.  

 

And please...never complain about today's drink prices again.....

[seasickphil]

7 hours ago, D&N said:

Do you have some examples of what you mean?

If you look at the Cunard own label wines i would hope that they are not selling these vintages onboard now. Making me think that this is not an up to date list.

I'm afraid for some reason i can't copy and paste but if you look at the list they have their Cunard Private Label White Wine @ $34 but the vintage is 2018 way too old to be drinkable i would think.  

 

[D&N]

1 hour ago, seasickphil said:

If you look at the Cunard own label wines i would hope that they are not selling these vintages onboard now. Making me think that this is not an up to date list.

I'm afraid for some reason i can't copy and paste but if you look at the list they have their Cunard Private Label White Wine @ $34 but the vintage is 2018 way too old to be drinkable i would think.  

 

They're effectively wines that are sold here as non vintage. We buy similar in 3L & 5L boxes. They are surprisingly robust and will be drinkable for many years provided they are stored properly. We certainly had all the Cunard wines last year but I can't remember the vintages that were served. I don't think they were particularly recent.

 

The one I can confirm is the Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre; a friend had arranged a cabin gift of one, which we brought home since we were on drinks package. It was the 2017 vintage in June 2022 and shows 2018 in that list.

 

They are all effectively glugging wines, fine for refreshment.

 

Edit: You can't copy/paste because the PDF is secured.

Edited July 10, 2023 by D&N

[seasickphil]

32 minutes ago, D&N said:

They're effectively wines that are sold here as non vintage. We buy similar in 3L & 5L boxes. They are surprisingly robust and will be drinkable for many years provided they are stored properly. We certainly had all the Cunard wines last year but I can't remember the vintages that were served. I don't think they were particularly recent.

 

The one I can confirm is the Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre; a friend had arranged a cabin gift of one, which we brought home since we were on drinks package. It was the 2017 vintage in June 2022 and shows 2018 in that list.

 

They are all effectively glugging wines, fine for refreshment.

 

Edit: You can't copy/paste because the PDF is secured.

 

You can't copy/paste because the PDF is secured.

 

I did not know that, thanks.

 

The   La Croix Vermentino Sauvignon Blanc Vin de Pays d'Oc listed just above Cunard Private label certainly needs to be drunk when young and fresh. I definitely would not be wanting to drink either a 2017/18 in 2023 as listed in the PDF.

 

[D&N]

1 hour ago, seasickphil said:

 

The   La Croix Vermentino Sauvignon Blanc Vin de Pays d'Oc listed just above Cunard Private label certainly needs to be drunk when young and fresh. I definitely would not be wanting to drink either a 2017/18 in 2023 as listed in the PDF.

 

It's not the sort of wine I would buy by the bottle, perfectly acceptable for refreshment (along with a much greater volume of water) when we're up dancing for 3 or 4 hours.  VIVINO feedback only rates the 2015 & 2016 vintages due to lack of comments on the others, but the 2015 edges it:

https://www.vivino.com/FR/fr/la-croix-bordeaux-vermentino-sauvignon-blanc/w/1948567?year=2015

 

But if you prefer it young and fresh I would check what vintage they are serving before ordering.

 

[exlondoner]

I imagine Cunard get through a lot of their cheaper wines. The more likely problem seems to be running out of some types rather than it getting old.

[Victoria2]

33 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

I imagine Cunard get through a lot of their cheaper wines. The more likely problem seems to be running out of some types rather than it getting old.

Well I certainly try and do my bit with regards to the cheaper whites! 🙂

[NE John]

Getting back to drinks and cocktail prices, I’ve been to “all-inclusive” resorts etc and that was a total waste of money. Leaser quality wine and beer offerings and bars with watered down drinks made with no care. 
I’d rather spent the slight Cunard premium for a really good cocktail or $65-70 for a good bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape vs the false value of an all-inclusive trip. 

[exlondoner]

10 minutes ago, NE John said:

Getting back to drinks and cocktail prices, I’ve been to “all-inclusive” resorts etc and that was a total waste of money. Leaser quality wine and beer offerings and bars with watered down drinks made with no care. 
I’d rather spent the slight Cunard premium for a really good cocktail or $65-70 for a good bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape vs the false value of an all-inclusive trip. 

And, of course, at all-inclusive resorts, unless you drink very heavily yourself, you are simply paying for others to do so, while you are more moderate.

[WantedOnVoyage]

Possibly and more likely on other lines or venues.... generally, we have found Cunard bar stewards and sommeliers to enjoy the challenge (and the custom) of gaming the system in both our favour. Indeed, I remember all of my "enablers" by name.  

 

Even using the drinks package to pro-rate good bottles of wine not sold by the glass. That's been done many times for us. Don't know how they do it, don't care as long as I doesn't show on my tab. Never does.

 

As for mixed drinks, you need to pick your venue. Best bar tender on QM2 last time was the South African lady in the Grills Lounge and hands down, the best bar on QV is the Yacht Club. Every cruise. Best negroni on the planet. Commodore Club is hit or miss. Worst on QM2 was the Ballroom where they were literally on the fiddle and we were getting stale Pol Acker instead of the listed prosecco. We actually caught them in the act and... we brought it up with the Bar Manager and that was the end of that. 

 

Cunard bar and wine service and selection is one of the main selling points for us... HAL  doesn't even have sommeliers anymore and you don't know what a watered down drink is unless you've sailed with them.  I think EURODAM must go through six bottles of gin per cruise tops.  

[D&N]

32 minutes ago, WantedOnVoyage said:

Even using the drinks package to pro-rate good bottles of wine not sold by the glass. That's been done many times for us. Don't know how they do it, don't care as long as I doesn't show on my tab. Never does.

I've thought that may be the key for a while. I asked for a breakdown of what we had and was told it wasn't available. You would think for accounting purposes it must be kept somewhere. But as long as nobody gets more than 15 drinks within price and measure limits per day it's not likely to be questioned.

Many staff note or memorise card details. There's probably scope to be creative with unused entitlements.

[NE John]

I believe they did away with the daily limits for drinks, as I saw on QM2 in June. 

[seasickphil]

We have never taken a drinks package [don't think its good value, not for us anyway] on our Cunard cruises but have always had either the Captain's or Commodore's wine collection, that is until our last cruise aboard Elizabeth. The reason for this was when we were aboard Mary the head sommelier, who got to know our tastes recommended us some really good bin end wines at a much reduced price that he had tasted earlier. So last time we had no package but just picked any wine we wanted off the main list with quite a few of the recommended bin ends thrown in, that suited us very well and we intend on doing this again in October aboard Elizabeth.