Wine lovers will travel far and wide for a great wine cellar and an extraordinary dining experience. But few have traveled as far as I did recently when I embarked on a 29-hour journey to the awe-inspiring island nation of the Maldives, located 400 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean.
I flew from New York to Qatar, waited hours in Doha for the daily plane to Malé (the capital of the Maldives), took a flight to the Haa Alifu atoll and an hour-long boat ride to arrive at Beach House Maldives, a new property of the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts brand. (The resort just launched a private service to fly guests directly from Malé.) Beach House Maldives is a private island resort covered in Jurassic Park vegetation, skirted by acres of white powdery beach and surrounded by a brilliant turquoise sea.
After a few hours of sleep, I was feted with an extravagant all-Champagne pairing dinner in a candlelit room of the resort’s high-design wine cellar located well under sea level. Cellar Master Sunny Chuang themed the dinner “A Dangerous Liaison” (named for my steamy memoir about my romance and marriage to the Belgian baron). The Champagne and food pairings were jaw-dropping: Billecart-Salmon Reserve with the caviar and eel; Bollinger La Grande Année ’99 matched the foie gras; a vertical of Jacquesson Grand Vin Signature (’88, ’89, ’90) graced the lobster and morels ragout; Perrier Jouet Belle Époque Rose ’02 paired perfectly with the coral trout and black truffles; Louis Roederer Cristal 2000 with the cheese course; and Krug Grande Cuvée exquisitely accented the crème brûlée.
Beach House Maldives is undeniably a wine-centric resort with an extensive global collection. All bungalows have eight-bottle wine refrigerators, and guests can consult with sommeliers to select wines for their stay. And Chuang, head of the sommelier team, conducts biweekly wine seminar/tasting dinners in the cellar.
In days I was off to the Conrad Rangali Island, another top Maldives wine destination under the Hilton umbrella. I arrived by seaplane at this resort built on two palm-fringed islands connected by a bridge and surrounded by a calm lagoon. Conrad Rangali Island has an astonishing $1.2 million, 32,000-bottle wine cellar and the world’s first all-glass undersea restaurant.
Accessible by a boardwalk that heads out to sea, then down a winding wooden staircase, the Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, a tubular clear glass capsule surrounded by lit coral gardens, is a wonder of the world. Schools of fish seemed to inspect our food as we savored the eight-course tasting menu, including poached lobster tails, gelée of oysters, roasted wild duckling, deer fillet and chocolate macadamia soup.
As I sipped my flute of Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill ’95, a frilly scorpion fish and a red-faced parrot fish glided by. Next a bluefin jack and a few reef sharks appeared. When a huge manta ray paused next to me for a few seconds on the other side of the glass, I knew this underwater safari made for a wine destination restaurant that was unsurpassed.