I’ll be honest, when I heard that Celebrity Cruises just racked up 25 Wine Spectator Awards, my first thought wasn’t, “Wow, impressive industry news. It was well, that explains a few very good evenings I can barely remember.
As someone who sails with Celebrity at least ten times a year. Yes, you read that right, ten. This milestone feels a little personal. I’ve sat in those dining rooms. I’ve had those sommeliers walk me through a bottle I never would have chosen myself. I’ve done the pairing workshops and nodded along like I understood the wine chemistry while actually just enjoying the fact that someone handed me four glasses in a row and called it education. I’ve even spent time in Napa helping them choose the upcoming wines in the vineyards with their winemakers and VP of beverages (and other) executives.
So yes, 25 Wine Spectator Awards, including 17 “Best of Awards of Excellence” and eight Awards of Excellence across the Edge, Solstice, and Millennium series? I’m not even a little surprised. I’m just glad the rest of the world is catching up to what cruisers like me already know.
The Numbers Are Actually Kind of Staggering
Let’s put this in perspective for a second. Celebrity Cruises has now earned 165 Wine Spectator awards over 14 consecutive years. That’s not a good year; that’s a track record a full-on CONSISTENT record. And this year marks the first time the line has ever received 17 “Best of Awards of Excellence” in a single cycle, which is the higher of Wine Spectator’s two honor tiers. These aren’t participation trophies. Wine Spectator evaluates wine lists based on the quality of the selections, the range of producers and regions represented, and how well the list complements the food being served. Earning this many, across this many ships and venues, is genuinely difficult and Celebrity keeps doing it year after year.
For context, these honors span the entire fleet: the Edge Series (Celebrity Edge, Apex, Beyond, Ascent, Xcel), the Solstice Series (Celebrity Solstice, Equinox, Eclipse, Silhouette, Reflection), and the Millennium Series (Celebrity Millennium, Summit, Constellation, Infinity). That’s not a flagship getting all the glory; it’s a brand-wide commitment to doing wine well, everywhere, every sailing.
The New Kids Are Already Making Waves
Two venues earned Wine Spectator recognition for the very first time this year, and both are worth your attention and, honestly, worth planning a sailing around.
Trattoria Rossa debuted on Celebrity Solstice when the ship completed its revitalization in March 2026. The concept is Roman and Southern Italian cuisine. It’s the kind of food that was built to be paired with wine in a setting warm enough to make you feel like you’ve been transported to an actual trattoria somewhere off a cobblestone street in Rome. The fact that it’s earning Wine Spectator recognition in its debut year tells you that Celebrity didn’t just add a pretty restaurant during the Solstice refresh. They added something that actually delivers.
Mosaic on Celebrity Xcel launched when the ship set sail in November 2025, with a concept that does something I find genuinely interesting: the menu draws inspiration from the regions the ship is currently visiting. So the food and the wine list shifts with the itinerary. As a frequent Celebrity guest who has occasionally started to feel like I could recite certain menus from memory, I appreciate when a dining experience is designed to actually feel different depending on where in the world you are. Mosaic seems built for exactly that.
Le Voyage Deserves Its Own Paragraph. Actually, Its Own Reservation.
If you’ve ever tried to get a table at Le Voyage, Celebrity’s exclusive restaurant from culinary ambassador Chef Daniel Boulud, you already know that “exclusive” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. This restaurant books fast, fills up faster, and has somehow managed to get even more impressive over time.
Earlier this year, Le Voyage became the first Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rated restaurant at sea, a distinction that puts it in the same conversation as some of the best restaurants in the world, FULL STOP. Now add Wine Spectator’s “Best of Award of Excellence” recognition across Celebrity Xcel, Celebrity Ascent, and Celebrity Beyond, and you have a dining experience that is, without question, destination-worthy on its own.
If you haven’t been yet and you’re a Celebrity regular like me, make it happen. Book the reservation before you book the excursions. Trust me on this one.
What It Actually Looks Like on Board
For those who haven’t sailed with Celebrity yet, first of all, hello, welcome, you have a lot of catching up to do. Here’s what this wine program looks like in practice.
Every single restaurant on every Celebrity ship sails with a trained sommelier. Not a server who knows a little about wine. An actual sommelier, whose entire job is to help you navigate a list of more than 500 selections. Those selections span the world’s most sought-after regions and acclaimed producers, alongside Celebrity’s own private label wines, which are genuinely good and not just “good for a ship.”
Beyond what’s in the glass, Celebrity offers programming that actually teaches you something. The Food and Wine Pairing Workshops are a personal favorite. They walk you through contrasting pairings so you understand why certain combinations work (and why some really don’t), covering the fundamentals of how food and wine interact chemically. It sounds like homework; it tastes like a very good afternoon. The World Wine Tours take a broader approach, offering tastings from regions across the globe with education on regional and varietal differences.
I’ve done both enough times that I now occasionally sound like I know what I’m talking about at dinner parties. This is Celebrity’s doing entirely.
Why This Matters If You’re Planning a Cruise
Here’s the practical takeaway: if you’re choosing between cruise lines and food and beverage quality matters to you, and I’d argue it should, given how much time you spend eating and drinking on a ship, Celebrity Cruises is operating at a genuinely different level than most of the competition. These aren’t self-reported awards. Wine Spectator is an independent publication with rigorous evaluation standards, and Celebrity has earned its recognition 165 times over 14 years running.
For frequent cruisers, this consistency is the whole point. I’m not surprised by a good meal on Celebrity anymore; I expect it. What continues to impress me is that the bar keeps moving. New venues like Trattoria Rossa and Mosaic are earning recognition in their first year. Le Voyage is now Five-Star Forbes-rated. The sommelier team keeps getting better. Fourteen years of consecutive awards isn’t a fluke; it’s a standard that the entire brand has committed to holding.
And honestly? As someone who sails this line more than most people sail any line, that consistency is what keeps me coming back. The wine helps too.
- Ready to experience it for yourself? Book your Celebrity Cruises vacation at CelebrityCruises.com or call 1-800-CELEBRITY.
Related – Read about my experience on the Celebrity Solstice in Alaska
