Qantas ambassador Neil Perry, alongside 10 sommeliers, will sip and swirl through 1500 wines for the national airlines’ annual blind tasting.
The tasting session is being held over five days, involving a team of 10 sommeliers, including some of Qantas’ Sommeliers in the Sky, who have been flown in from as far as London for the event.
“Wine week is a rigorous process, tasting hundreds of wines and selecting the best for our customers,” said Perry, Qantas’ creative director of food, beverage and service.
“It’s fantastic to not only profile much loved classics, but up and coming growers too, and present the best of the Australian wine industry to a global stage.”
Approximately 200 wines will be selected and rolled out across the Qantas Domestic, International and
Lounge network later this year.
Qantas customers consume nearly 30 million glasses of Australian wine on-board annually, making the
national carrier one of the world’s largest purchasers of Australian wine.
“Our team of Neil Perry and Qantas sommeliers will sip and swirl through 1,500 bottles of wine this week, before selecting the best drops to offer our customers,” Qantas Master Sommelier Sebastian Crowther said.
“We’re proud to be one of the biggest buyers of Australian wine, taking world-class and home-grown varieties to millions of travellers globally.”
As for what is proving popular, Crowther said lighter style were dominant.
“Really what we’re looking for ultimately is wines that have great drinkability to them, so wines that are balanced, have wonderful freshness to them and really the kind of modern Australian style is a wine that has purity and a lot of elegance,” he said.
“Over the last sort of five, six or seven years we’ve started to see people drinking fresher in style, lighter styled wines, so that’s things like grenache, which has grown in warm climate regions, but has a softness and an elegance to it.
“Red grapes like pinot noir, of course, which have this really nice kind of approachability and drinkability to them, and maybe a bit of a shift away from some of those bigger, kind of richer, heavier styles of wine that Australia’s produced, and still does produce a lot of.
And in white wines, it’s a similar trend. So, we’re seeing wines that have great freshness, natural acidity, wines that are lighter in style.”
The teams are using traditional wine tasting techniques, while also considering how each wine will taste in
the sky and as part of the on-board dining experience.
This year, Qantas has also trained more than 130 international cabin crew to become sommeliers across the airline’s First, Business and Premium Economy cabins. Qantas is the only Australian carrier to have
dedicated sommeliers serving customers in the sky.
The event follows February’s Cellar in the Sky Awards, where Qantas was awarded a record 13 medals,
including the airline with the best overall cellar.
Fast facts
• 5: the number of days the blind tasting process will take.
• 10: the number of Qantas sommeliers involved this week.
• 4,200: the number of glasses being tasted this week.
• 27 million: The number of glasses Qantas customers consumed last year.
• Most popular wines in-lounge: Champagne, chardonnay and pinot noir.
• Most popular wines in-flight: shiraz and chardonnay.
