{"id":7993,"date":"2011-04-24T01:27:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T08:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=7993"},"modified":"2011-04-24T01:27:10","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T08:27:10","slug":"celebrity-eclipse-wine-sommelier-cellarmaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=7993","title":{"rendered":"The Eclipse's Worldly Cellar Master"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When we winos think of sommeliers, there is a tendency to believe they’re from France, or Italy, maybe Australia, perhaps Argentina.<\/p>\n

But Croatia?<\/p>\n

It was a small winery somewhere north of Zagreb that sent Sinisa Lepanovic to the world of wines. On the Celebrity Eclipse<\/a>, he is more than a sommelier\u2026he is The Cellar Master, a title bestowed on the most deserving of sommeliers by a cruise line that takes its wine seriously. Is having 22 sommeliers on the Eclipse serious enough?<\/p>\n

The fact that Sinisa would probably be ID’d if he were a wine customer is beside the point. His roots in the business and his eagerness to be educated made him a sommelier before 30, and he’s been a Solstice-Class Cellar Master for more than three years.<\/p>\n

“My grandfather had a small winery in Croatia, and I used to help him,” he says. “I tasted wine before fermentation, and I liked it [when it was essentially fruit juice]. Then later I had the real wine, and I liked it. We are not a big producer in Croatia\u2026we make small quantities. In our family business, I was helping my uncle, and we learned how to do everything. Yes, jumping on the grapes, too, at harvest.”<\/p>\n

Lepanovic started as a bar server with Celebrity<\/a>, almost seven years ago. He enrolled in the Cordon Bleu School in Miami and supplemented that with seminars and exams on board and having a degree from Croatia in economics and business didn’t hurt his climb to Master Sommelier, or Cellar Master, one of about 15 with the company.<\/p>\n

The Equinox is his sixth ship and, like all Celebrity ships, there is a room named after him\u2026Cellar Masters.<\/p>\n

“To be a Master of Sommelier, you can know everything, but if you don’t have a style \u2014 if you have no personality \u2014 you will not make it as a master,” he says. “You need knowledge, personality and style.”<\/p>\n

And a love of wine.<\/p>\n

When pressed, like the grapes, Sinisa admits his white preference would be a Sauvignon Blanc and he likes his reds big, from the Cabernet Sauvignon vines. However, the reality is he just likes wine.<\/p>\n

“Wine is like the ladies,” he laughs. “They are all beautiful!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we winos think of sommeliers, there is a tendency to believe they’re from France, or Italy, maybe Australia, perhaps Argentina. But Croatia? It was a small winery somewhere north of Zagreb that sent Sinisa Lepanovic to the world of wines. On the Celebrity Eclipse, he is more than a sommelier\u2026he is The Cellar Master,… Continue reading The Eclipse's Worldly Cellar Master<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,19,15],"tags":[138,451,204,86,148,116,88],"class_list":["post-7993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-ships","category-stories","tag-celebrity-cruises","tag-celebrity-eclipse","tag-cruise-ship-entertainment","tag-cruise-ships","tag-transatlantic-cruises","tag-wine","tag-wine-on-board","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}