There’s never any question where the wine on a cruise aboard Emerald Liberté comes from: Just look out the window. Every day on the Rhône and Saone Rivers, the complimentary pours served at lunch and dinner were from vineyards so local that you could actually walk off the ship and hike the hills where the grapes were grown.
The same local flavor can be had in the fresh fruits and flavorful vegetables served at mealtimes. On this spring cruise, Liberté’s head chef Teodor Petre and his team were in the farm markets first thing in the morning on each stop to buy vegetables and fruits fresh from the field.
Even the supermarkets bring in high quality vegetables and fresh salad greens daily, the chef notes. “You can tell by the smell when something is fresh picked. In Avignon there is a market right on the dock and we have suppliers who make sure we have the quantities we need.”
So even if you’re not a foodie, you’ll become one on Emerald Waterways’ jewel of a ship. Here’s a taste:
It must be time to eat
The running gag on the ship stems from a story that the Liberté’s cruise director, Jana Pakstaitis tells on the first night out. It’s about a cruiser who discovers that it’s never long between opportunities to dine or snack. The punch line before every course: “It must be time to eat!”
All day long, there are opportunities for a sit down or a snack.
Ballet in the kitchen
Incredibly, all these delights come out of a galley no larger than the kitchen in a modern ranch home and five chefs plus cleanup staff have to glide with the precision of a dance troupe between ovens and prep tables to keep it all happening smoothly.
The executive chef has run famed restaurants ashore, including one near the Southampton docks in England. He does a showy reveal and explanation of the entrees on offer at the daily briefings each evening before dinner.
The salads are a revelation. The greens have a refreshing pop you could only find if you grew them in your own garden. Meats and fish are locally sourced and even the vegetarian options are succulent made with such fresh ingredients. There’s always a flair to the presentations on the plate, artistic swirls of sauce and color accents to veggies and flowers.
Desserts on the ship have the subtle nuances of the sweets from the best French patisseries. A memorable cheese cake featured hints of orange and lime rind to give it extra zest.
The guest chef’s a star
A highlight of every cruise on Liberté is a gourmet dinner overseen by guest celebrity chef Fabien Royal Morreale, who owns three renowned restaurants in Provence. He was a finalist in the 2013 edition of the Top Chef France television competition and he’s a master of the subtlety of Provençale cuisine. He introduces the meal, claiming it’s made with “a few things I brought from my garden,” while he busily assembles appetizers in the center of the dining room.
The meal is a tour de force of the region’s produce, with a vegetable salad and cheese from Aix en Provence, then a beef confit cooked for eight hours over low heat. Slow cooking is a tradition in France’s south and meat emerges so tender and juicy that it doesn’t need special cutlery to eat. Dessert is an ethereal apple gateau “like grandmother used to make.”
It’s not the only gala meal in a week on board. There are five-course events three other evenings during the cruise. It’s a way Emerald compensates for not having an alternative restaurant on this ship, which is smaller than its sisters sailing on the Rhine and Danube.
Discovering the wines and vines
There are 2000 years of wine making history in the Rhône valley and everywhere we go, the vines and the wines are never far away.
A wine tasting on board one afternoon is led by the master of the Terres de Syrah winery near Tournon. We’re in Burgundy and you’d imagine wines made here would be mostly reds, but in reality around half of the production of the vineyards in this region are whites, he explains.
The way he describes it, the popularity of Rhone wines has soared thanks to Robert Parker, a wine authority whose influential rankings led to a skyrocketing of prices. Notable are the wines of Hermitage and the Côte-Rôtie (a play on the notion that the vineyards on slopes get so much sun, the earth is literally roasted by the heat).
Grape plots along the river now sell for up to a million Euros a hectare. That’s meant ownership has shifted from traditional families to multi-millionaire moguls and conglomerates and a down-side is that wine prices have soared. On the upside though, sulphites and copper which in the past could induce allergic reactions in some drinkers are now forbidden by law for use as pesticides and in processing in the region.
The most famous wine of the Terres de Syrah is called Trebol and is aged in oak, resulting is a very dry fruity wine. The winner in the shipboard taste test is Crozes-Hermitage, grown on the slopes around Tournon, where we’re docked. It’s made with Syrah grapes and is more acidic than the Shiraz made from similar grapes in Australia or California. The primary wines in this stretch of the river are Côtes du Rhône Villages and they typically have undertones of chocolate, berries or plum and pair well with meats lighter than beef, such as veal. I’m glad I took notes, because the tasting included many large and tasty pours.
There’s life and more temptation at night
Night life ranges from an evening of French bistro songs sung by a chanteuse to a dance night with a DJ from Avignon “playing hits from the 60s through the 90s” or the house pianists tickling the ivories. There’s also a nightly screening of a recent release movie shown in the pool zone at the rear of the ship. The pool is covered over and comfortable lounge chairs set up along with a popcorn machine and bar. It comes with the added attraction of views along the river at night.
After all that gourmet dining, for some guests it must be time to eat, again. There’s a “late night snack” in the lounge if you’ve still not overindulged enough. And when you get back to your suite, there’s a rich local chocolate on the pillow as a nightcap.
I sure wish I had a fairy godmother like this constantly delivering treats at home.
