Small Ship Luxury Wine Cruises

Sea Cloud with full sails

Wine cruises on small luxury ships

Every year since 1994 Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours has arranged a small ship wine cruise. On these special small-party wine holidays, you visit interesting out of the way places, sail into small harbours to avoid the crowds and stop for impromptu swims off the boat along the way, if you wish. There is a superb programme of on board wine tastings and wine dinners offering a panoply of wines from the regions we are visiting on the wine cruise. These are chosen by our in-house wine team who personally join you on board to comment on the wines. There are also private wine visits and meals at wine estates ashore.

These small luxury ship wine cruises appeal to a discerning clientele and are often described as floating house-parties. It is rather like chartering your own very luxury yacht with a party of very interesting friends all of whom have come together as they enjoy the good things in life. There is no noisy after dinner entertainment, just one civilised sitting for a truly relaxing wine-tasting dinner and on arrival in each port there is just one coach to meet the party (rather than a huge bank of 30 coaches-plus, which is the nightmare scenario awaiting you on a mass market cruise where you arrive in a destination like a marauding hoarde).

The Arblaster & Clarke Wine Cruise for 2012 is on the stunning square rigged Sea Cloud, departing 8 July. This beautiful wine cruise sailing accommodates just 50 passengers.

New Year 2012 – 2013: A wonderful new wine river cruise – on the Douro for the New Year in 2012! Please see below for details.

Please see the short clip below from the Ponant, 2008 Wine Cruise from Nice to Venice on SY Ponant, kindly sent in by a client from this trip:

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Other Ideas and Past Tours

Arblaster & Clarke's Le Ponant Wine Cruise

31 August - 7 September 2011

Western Mediterranean Wine Cruise on Le Ponant 2011 This year’s small-ship luxury wine cruise is in late summer on this most beautiful sailing ship. Of all the lovely, small sailing ships that we have chartered since …

Galapagos Islands & South American Wines Cruise

28 January - 5 February 2011

When we recently discovered the award winning M.V. Eclipse, we knew it was the answer to what we had been looking for a long time – a small, comfortable ship to arrange a wine tour of South America on! Of course, there is no wi…

Athens to Malta Wine Cruise 2010

11 - 20 July 2010

Introducing our 2010 Wine Cruise Every year A&C offers a small ship cruise. We visit smaller harbours and stop for impromptu swims. You will get to know the crew and your fellow passengers and meet people from the host …

Greek Wine Cruise

6 - 13 June 2009

“SAILING THE WINE DARK SEA” This was a superb Wine Cruise in June 2009 on the magnificent Star Clipper in Greece. Go to our 2010 Wine Cruise Arblaster & Clarke…

Sicily to Venice Wine Cruise aboard Le Ponant

27 July - 1 August 2008

A wonderful voyage of discovery taking in dramatic sites out of the way places and great food and wine. We sailed from Sicily to Gallipoli and Trani in Puglia, Korcula in Croatia before ending in Venice. “*Go to our 2010 Wi…

Corsica, Italy & Croatia Wine Cruise

22 July - 1 August 2008

A luxury small ship Wine Cruise from Nice to Venice, with great food and wine. We sailed round Italy, calling in on Corsica, Sicily and the Croatia’s Dalmatian islands too. being on a smaller ship we were of course able to cal…

Nice to Sicily Wine Cruise 2008 aboard Le Ponant

22 - 27 July 2008

The cruise started in Nice, and took in Genoa, Porto Venere, Corsica, Gaeta, Agropoli for Paestum and Taormina in Sicily. Go to our 2010 Wine Cruise or for the full itine…

Mediterranean Cruise Star Clipper STWC

28 July - 4 August 2007

This was a fabulous Sunday Times Wine Club event, the latest in our series of great Wine Cruises with the Sunday Times Wine Club. The Star Clipper can accommodate 170 people, but we we restricted numbers to just 130, to have…

Super Yacht Cruise Sicily to Greece

8 - 16 June 2006

This year’s cruise took us from Sicily to Greece on the S.Y. Pantheon, sister ship of the super-yacht S.C. Panorama that we have for 2010. Go to our 2010 Wine Cruise …

Venice to Dubrovnik Wine Cruise

17 - 24 August 2005

A&C chartered the fabulous super-yacht ‘Pantheon’ for a wine cruise from Venice to Dubrovnik. We stopped at many of the ports and islands that used to belong to Venice and where that stamp of the Lion of St Mark is clearly…