How Singapore Airways Picks Its Champagne Bottles

Whether or not you’re flying on Singapore Airways to Frankfurt, New York, or Southeast Asia, one factor first-class company can rely on is a flute of Champagne. Or two.

That’s as a result of the airline, which serves 77 locations, makes a degree of stocking at the least two high-end choices — be they Krug’s iconic Grand Cuvée, a 2015 Bollinger, or a 2012 Taittinger — for its first-class passengers. (In enterprise class, company are provided 2015 Piper-Heidsieck Brut Classic.) 

On a typical long-haul flight, just like the New York to Singapore nonstop that’s the world’s longest frequently scheduled service, cabin employees will serve a full case of Champagne. Different routes, like these on the double-decker Airbus A380 airplane, which seats 84 passengers in enterprise and first, will simply undergo two circumstances. All in, the airline pours about 400,000 bottles of bubbly a yr, in accordance with a spokesperson.

Gathering up that amount of high-end wine isn’t any small job. Earlier than any corks are popped at 38,000 ft, the airline’s workforce of wine-world insiders makes an annual shopping for journey to northern France. Amongst them are Jeannie Cho Lee, the primary individual of Asian heritage to attain a Grasp of Wine certification; Michael Hill Smith, Australia’s first Grasp of Wine; and British wine author Oz Clarke. Their enviable job? Visiting Champagne homes and tasting an astonishing variety of wines to find out which particular bottlings will sparkle with taste when served within the comparatively dry and pressurized cabin of an airliner.

“We’ve acquired to make it possible for the primary drink individuals get in enterprise class goes to make them smile, each single time,” Clarke says.

That form of perception comes from the panel’s visits, whether or not to the chalk crayères, or caves, of Charles Heidsieck, reachable by means of a winding staircase, or the cellars of Krug, the place cabinets of bottles, sorted by classic, supply a library of the flavors one may count on on board.

Then there’s the query of sourcing wines that may pair effectively with the onboard meals, Cho Lee says. “One thing drier can intensify the chili — it will possibly make a dish style spicier,” she observes. Against this, a Champagne with a contact of residual sugar tends to pair extra favorably with milder meals. 

Whether or not a visitor opts for a Singapore-inspired hen satay or one thing French, such because the airline’s standard lobster thermidor, the wine must be simply as spectacular, Clarke says. “We be sure of that.”

A model of this story first appeared within the September 2024 problem of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Tiny Bubbles within the Sky.”