I didn’t think we were cruising types, until we tasted the wine on board this ship

Our preconceptions of screaming kids and lobster-red boozers crammed into sun loungers put us off cruising. But we couldn’t have been more wrong.

I’ll be honest, my husband Tom and I are probably holiday snobs, and have these romantic notions of discovering wild beaches and the real, lesser-travelled nooks and crannies of a place. Rules, be gone, all we need is a dogeared Lonely Planet and a damp finger in the air.

Well, that’s more my style anyway. If Tom had his way we’d be working to a tightly-planned, laminated (preferably) itinerary with complete adherence to everything on it throughout the trip. But, marriage is a partnership.

To put our usual holidays into perspective, before lockdown, we stumbled on a beach whilst travelling around Goa. It could only be accessed via a clapped out SUV that took us down a steep and treacherously rocky path – I’m talking neck dislocation from being flung around as the car slowly descended the boulder-strewn track towards the shore.

With only had a couple of tiny hotels, a deserted beach and a lagoon, it was so remote that even the beach dogs had bailed to a resort-heavy strip some way away. We, on the other hand were so captivated by our discovery that our plans to visit the rest of Goa were instantly binned. This place felt like Alex Garland’s book, ‘The Beach’, only less murdery.

So, you’ll understand how anxiety-inducing the idea of spending a week on a ship bigger than your average London five-star hotel – shoulder to shoulder with three and a half thousand people – could be.

It’s a world where shore days are booked in advance, orderly queues are formed, eye contact and conversations with strangers happen in the lifts and timings are a thing if you don’t want to be stranded in St Lucia (though I could think of worse things).

In short, our comfort zone was last seen at Heathrow Airport and would take two working weeks to relocate.

But for all our fretting, it has to be said, we acclimatised quickly once we’d clocked that there wasn’t a single child on board the P&O Britannia, and got checked into our balconied cabin with sea view and complementary bottle of bubbly. Funny, that. It turns out that having a deluxe cabin in easy reach of restaurants, bars and the pool is actually pretty reassuring. Spoiler alert, we ended up having a fantastic week, but this isn’t a cruise review.

Once we’d had a sharpener and explored the insanely large vessel on the first night, we got our bearings and headed down the ship to eat. And, here’s where the magic happened…

The Glasshouse isn’t just any tapas bar, it’s helmed by Spanish celebrity cooking powerhouse, José Pizarro. This same restaurant can also be found on board P&O’s other ships; Arvia, Azura, Iona and Ventura. The dishes are elevated-Spanish (if that’s even a category) but luckily they weren’t venturing into deconstructed haute cuisine. They still bore a strong likeness to their descriptions on the menu, thank goodness – we’re talking fan favourites like pan con tomate, lamb chops with patatas bravas, king prawns a la plancha, Iberico ham and my favourite, squid croquetas filled with their own ink.

Being handed the wine list was like receiving the keys to Willy Wonka’s boozy chocolate factory, thanks to TV’s wine whisperer, Olly Smith. He’s curated a fascinating list, full of classics, icons and lesser-known, discoverable treats. It’s adorned with fine wines from Tignanello by Antinori at the market retail price of £225 a bottle to Pintia by legendary Spanish producer, Vega Sicilia is £65 a bottle (its currently £75 in Threshers).

Without giving too much away, here were a few of Olly’s wines that made waves with us during our cruise. And since there are so many superb contenders, it was tough to only choose a selection.

Sparkling

Breaky Bottom, Cuvée Grace Nichols, England

• 175ml: £8.50
• Bottle: £38

I love that Breaky Bottom is front and centre on Olly’s wine list. It’s a lesser-known and beautifully eccentric sparkling wine producer from East Sussex.

Unusually, this cuvée is made from 100% Syval Blanc, not the triumvirate of Champagne grapes you’d expect to find in an English sparkling. The resulting flavours of Golden Delicious apple, river stone and lip smacking preserved lime will have you yearning for a second (and third) helping.

*£36 in Waitrose

White

Anhydrous, Santorini, Greece

• 175ml: £13.95
• 250ml: £19.50
• Bottle: £52.50

Ah, Santorini; all blue rooftops, alabaster-white buildings against that turquoise sea. Aside from looking like a Zoom background, Santorini also produces some of the finest white wines in existence, counterintuitively due to its hostile growing conditions of aridity and a fierce wind that batters the vines.

This is an exceptional example, headed by their signature grape, Assyrtiko (ass-ear-tick-oh), giving preserved lemon and dried oregano with a lick of sea salt on the finish.

Or try: The Best Assyrtiko White Wine, £10.25, Morrisons

Orange

Naranjo, Torontel, Chile

• 175ml: £6.25
• Bottle: £24

Strikingly copper in colour, this is an orange wine that’s been fermented in giant concrete eggs for eight months.

The juice has been in contact with the pinkish skins of old-vine Torontel grapes, which is how you make a red wine though unusual for white grapes. This process brings in exotic notes of orange peel, cardamom, apricot and lychee and beautiful, mouth filling texture.

Or try: Côté Mas Orange Vin De France, £8.99 (£1 off), Waitrose

Red

Bedoba, Saperavi, Georgia

• 175ml: £7.50
• 250ml: £9.50
• Bottle: £28.50

Hands down the highlight wine of the trip for me. Saperavi is Georgia’s answer to Malbec, with a hint of Syrah about it. A percentage of the grapes are left to dry on the vine until November, then aged in underground, earthenware amphorae called ‘qvevri’. All of which adds oodles of intensity and concentration to the wine.

Interestingly, Saperavi is one of a handful of ‘teinturier’ grapes, red-pigmented in the flesh and skin. It’s savoury, spicy, inky-coloured and tasted of spiced blackberries, dried Mediterranean herbs and a quick twist of a pepper grinder.

Or try: M&S Found Saperavi, £11

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