I was recently a passenger on the M/S Celebration, a Carnival Cruise Line ‘Fun-ship’ departing from Jacksonville, Fl and destined for the Bahamas. As this was my first cruise, I was fairly nervous about normal things like seasickness and worse yet, an outbreak of a strange strain of the flu. While I didn’t experience any of the first two negative affects, I did experience sticker shock at the alcohol markup on the ship. A standard mixed cocktail was about $6. While this may not seem like a lot of money, it really could add up at the rate that I witnessed people consuming these fruity drinks.

Luckily, I had read my pre-departure handbooks carefully and learned that the wine corkage fee was $10/bottle. Now, this may seem somewhat outrageous given that most BYOBs charge between nothing and $5. But, bringing your own wine on board is definitely the more economical way to go for a cruise. My sister and I enjoyed a great bottle of Riesling (she’s a lover of that variety). I chose the S.A. Prüm Essence Riesling 2005, priced at $10 it’s a great value and a very enjoyable wine. Best described by the winemakers, the Essence 2005, from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region in Germany, has “fresh fruit flavors perfectly balanced by a racy acidity and mineral character.”

The point of this posting isn’t the quality of the wine, but rather commentary on what us wine drinkers go through when purchasing wine at restaurants. Most restaurants have between a 3 and 5 times markup for their wines. So, for places that offer a corkage fee, it is definitely worth the price to bring a bottle of something you truly love and fork over the few bucks.

For my cruise, it was particularly lucky that we thought ahead for one big reason: all of the wines available on the ship were run-of-the-mill, heavily-marketed wines. Now, I’m fine with drinking these discount wines (such as Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi or Stone Cellars by Beringer) when you’re only paying retail, but the cruise ship I was on had a markup that averaged 3.7 times retail! You should be committed to a mental institution if you let someone pay between $24 and $40 (3 to 5 times the retail price) for these ‘inexpensive’ wines. With the corkage fee tacked on to my Riesling, the bottle would only have cost $20, which is $4 less and one million times more enjoyable than purchasing a bottle of Woodbridge on board.

Bringing your own bottle also ensures a pleasant drinking experience and takes away the confusion with selecting a bottle you may never have heard of from a list of wines. Also, a restaurant with an extensive wine list does not always employ a sommelier, so you will be pretty much going it alone in trying to select a wine from the list. Trying new wines in a restaurant is a needlessly expensive hobby. I would suggest that you be experimental at home and go with trusted wines while dining out.

As a side note, the cruise ship didn’t even charge me the corkage fee I was expecting! My server didn’t even bother to ring it up.