Veteran Decanter columnist Michael Broadbent has been appointed fine wine advisor to the world’s biggest and most luxurious cruise liner the Queen Mary 2.
Broadbent – who was at the launch ceremony in Southampton yesterday, when the Queen broke a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot against the ship’s side – Is delighted with the job, which requires him to advise on the 50,000-case cellar on board the massive ship, and to annotate the wine list.
He and his wife Daphne are also obliged to take two cruises a year, on which Broadbent will give tutored tastings.
‘I’m committed to two cruises this year,’ he told decanter.com. ‘One in the Mediterranean in the summer and a two-week trip to the Carribean in November, starting in New York.’
The 28-page wine list covers every wine-producing region of the world. The wine buyers, based in Miami, are backed up by an international team of sommeliers, and Broadbent himself.
At the top of the list are Chateau Margaux 1982 at US$1050 per bottle, Chateau Lafite 1982 (US$1250), Petrus 1989 (US$2650), top Burgundies like De Vogue Musigny Vieilles Vignes, Penfolds Grange, Chateau Musar from the Lebanon, top wines from the Rhone, Portugal, California and other regions. There are also ‘very reasonably priced’ cru bourgeois and other mid-ranking wines.
Broadbent is impressed by the prices charged. ‘These aren’t restaurant prices,’ he said.
One of the handful of wine commentators to merit his own entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine, Broadbent is an expert on the fine wines of the world. He is Decanter’s longest-standing columnist.
The Queen Mary 2, Cunard’s new flagship, is the world’s longest, tallest, widest and most expensive passenger ship ever built. Its upper decks are so high that viewers can come face to face with the Statue of Liberty when the ship first docks in New York.
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