The airline plans to introduce 47 wines from Burgundy for Premium Class customers, rotating them over an 18-month period, thanks to a new sourcing policy which sees its wine consultants visit vineyards to source ‘small-batch’ wines.
The three consultants – Oz Clarke, Jeannie Cho Lee MW and Michael Hill-Smith MW – have sourced a number of Grand Cru and Premier Cru labels from producers including Faiveley, Benjamin Leroux, Domaine d’Ardhuy and Domaine de Montille.
SIA said the new sourcing approach complemented the airline’s traditional way of listing wines through tender requests.
‘By expanding the range of labels that SIA offers on board, we are able to ensure a well-planned rotation of wines to keep the palates of our frequent flyers continually excited,’ said Betty Wong, SIA’s divisional vice president, inflight services and design.
‘During our wine consultants’ visits to the vineyards, we also actively sought out smaller maisons and domaines to bring them into the SIA family, thus allowing us to expand the depth and range of our offerings, and satisfy the rising demand for more exclusive Burgundy labels.’
In 2017, Hill Smith MW told Decanter.com about the process for choosing wines for the airline.
‘We spend a week blind tasting close to 1,000 wines in their categories using international tasting standards. We might taste 80-100 bottles for Business Class Bordeaux.’
Singapore Airlines currently serves about 2m bottles of wine on board every year, across all passenger classes.
