Alrighty folks, we're down to the last few pictures that I have. When
DCL redid their website this excursion was added. When I saw it I did the "oh oh oh we gotta go!" dance. This was about the same time that Wine Spectator came out with their food/wine issue- so when I showed Rick the excursion and the write up about Graycliff's wine cellars- I got the go ahead to book it. It was kinda pricey- $189 a person!
But I have to tell ya, I'd pay it again in a heartbeat!
Our group was to meet at Cadillac Lounge at 1:15, then head into Nassau to Graycliff. Well, at 1:15 we sat staring at our cruise activity staff person, Christine, and came to the realization that we were the "group"- just Rick and I!
We were escorted down and introduced to Tiana who would be taking us over to Graycliff resort. Not far from the dock, Graycliff is located in the historic district on a street next to the Governor's house.
Governor's House-
We pulled up in our taxi and realized.....everything in Nassau has a wall around it! Walked into the resort and really began to wonder about this. Graycliff is one of the oldest resorts in the Bahamas, in fact it had the first swimming pool in the Bahamas (just refurbished even- all handpainted tiles!). It's really an estate that was converted to cottages and B&B kind of thing with beautiful gardens and steakhouse, cigar factory, etc, etc, etc.... but that's not why we came here.
We were led back to the main dining room and prsented with champagne cocktails to sip while we did the cellar tour. This was totally amazing. The oldest bottle in the cellar is an Armagnac from 1721. It was absolutely stunning. Rick had to be drug out of the Port cellar. Extensive doesn't even come close to describing it.
After this we were led back to the sitting room. These are shelves that divide sitting room/main dining room containing cognacs, armagnacs, ports-
And met up with Chef Beaux, who would be doing our cheese pairing along with Gary, the wine steward. The usual cheese sommelier wasn't there, as he was travelling. This is where we made the connection- the cheese guy, the one that usually did these tastings, is actually the owner of Graycliff!
Jinkies! But Chef has done quite a few things in our home state(Louisiana) so we had quite a few things in common and a great rapport, so I'm kinda glad it was him.
We sat down and started with a square plate with 9 indentations each with a different cheese. Also supplemented with quince paste, violet jelly, a malbec reduction jelly, and another jam that I can't remember now. We also had crackers and grapes- a full bevy of whatever we might want to pair with our tasting!
Our first row of cheese were an aged parmesan, a dutch aged cheddar, and a Spanish aged Manchego. All hard cheeses, all great in their own way but the Dutch cheddar was my favorite. These were each paired with a pinot grigio(De Stefani), a sauvingon blanc, and a chardonnay(Montes- Argentina).
The second row were a bit softer- a fontina, a provolone, and an italian truffled cheese. These were paired with a pinot noir, merlot, and cabernet sauingon. The truffle cheese was amazing! Needless to say when we got to pick what we wanted another taste of that was mine! We had a nice little discussion about truffles and how that affected the wine and the cheese and Chef said hang on a minute and went to the kitchen- came back with spoons for each of us and a jar of tuffled HONEY! Talk about decadent...
Anyway, (just thinking about it makes me able to taste it) back to the pairings- the third row were all blue cheeses- a gorgonzola, that was fairly young and had alot of bite to it, a Danish blue- that was very mellow and balanced, with an almost sweet aftertaste- Gary, the wine steward, and I agreed it was the best blue by far, and an English stilton, that Rick liked best. It had some age to it and a more refined bite. These were paired with a cabernet and a Kaiken malbec from Argentina.
After this we thought we were done.....nope! We got another plate with 4 more offerings- palate cleansers and dessert cheeses! The first was a goat cheese with olive oil and fresh cracked pepper with a Sancerre, the buffalo mozzarella with homemade tomato jam, next was cream cheese with fresh honeycomb- just to show that even philly cream cheese can be flavorful and elegant, and last was a marscapone cheese blended with honey with a lemon zest biscotti with a nice, sweet Sauterne.
To finish everything off we got to try their homemade chocolates (they're adding a chocolate factory across the street) dark chocolate nibs, dark chocolate covered pineapple, and covered guava with a champagne.
Needless to say, we had a great time. And what was scheduled for 1.5 hour excursion was more of 2.5 hours. We had a great chat- we are by no means experts or wine snobs- we like what we like and sometimes that's a $50 bottle and sometimes it's a $10 bottle. It was a great learning experience, and I would do this again (and again, and again, and again)
(Glad I wasn't doing dishes!)
Where in Iowa does your friend live?
Don't know how much that helps though.
