3rd December, 2014 by Rupert Millar

The carrier has said it been buying wines en primeur and keeping them up to a decade before they are ready to be consumed in a cellar it owns in Burgundy – which apparently holds 1.2m bottles already.

President of the airline, Sir Tim Clark, said: “To us, wine is an experience. Our customers want to enjoy wine onboard as if they were in a fine dining restaurant. It’s not just red, white, or rosé. They are interested in where the grape comes from, the vintage, the vineyard’s heritage and so on. That is why over a decade ago, we moved away from the usual corporate procurement process and decided to take control of our own destiny.

“We could have taken the easy way out – just do the maths for how many bottles we’d need in each cabin class over a year, then put it up for tender. But with the scale of our operations, this would limit our choices as not many producers can offer the quantities we’d need, at the quality standards that we’d want.

“We’d rather buy the best wines we can get in smaller lots, and offer our customers more opportunities to try the best vintages, even though this requires a lot more work in terms of operational logistics from the loading of flights and menu updates, to the training of our cabin crew.” 

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