Which airline serves the best champagne?

The golden days of flying may be long gone, but for those lucky enough to turn left when boarding there is still the prospect of champagne. And as competition for first-class customers increases – British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France have all lately unveiled new first-class suites – more airlines are now looking to sparkling wine to give their offering the edge.

Singapore Airlines recently signed an exclusive deal to pour Cristal 2015 – a prestige cuvée it serves to first-class passengers on selected routes in tulip glasses by Lalique. “That glass of champagne is pretty much the first thing that happens to you on a flight, so it’s terribly important to get it right,” says SA’s wine consultant Oz Clarke. “And with long-lived wines of this calibre, that takes real planning. The red Bordeaux we’re currently serving in first class, a 2005 Pichon Lalande, for example, is one we bought 15 years ago. The wines we’re buying now probably won’t leave the cellar until 2035.” 

Qatar Airways’ newly appointed master of wine, Anne Krebiehl, is a champagne specialist. She argues the case for drinking it at altitude, backed by flavour science. “At 35,000ft, our senses are dulled due to cabin pressure and the relative dryness of the air, but our perception of umami is not affected,” she says. “And you find a lot of umami in long-aged wines like Krug or Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve, which contains a lot of reserve wines. The bubbles also help to carry aroma straight to your olfactory receptors and stimulate the trigeminal nerve, a super-highway of sensory perception that is not at all affected by altitude, dryness or white noise.”

Krug Grande Cuvée 172ème Édition, served on Qatar Airways

Bollinger Rosé 2007

A gold-medal winner at the recent Cellars in the Sky Awards, Qatar Airways offers white and rosé champagne in first and business. “In first we are currently serving Krug, with its exquisite savouriness, and Bollinger La Grande Année Rosé, a pinot-led cuvée with a lush velvetiness,” says Krebiehl. “In business it’s often Heidsieck Brut Réserve, which I am a huge devotee of – it has such depth.”

Air France gets through more than a million bottles a year

Air France prides itself on offering champagne to passengers in every class. The airline’s new head sommelier Xavier Thuizat – who is also head sommelier at Paris’s Hôtel de Crillon – tells me they get through more than one million bottles of champagne a year. As part of its £7bn upgrade, British Airways has doubled down on English sparkling wine. Prestige cuvées available in first class over the coming months will include Nyetimber’s 1086 rosé and Gusbourne’s Fifty One Degrees North, plus a new sparkler from Dermot Sugrue, a cult-ish winemaker in the South Downs. On the champagne front, BA has also reinstated the excellent Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle. 

Booze has been integral to the inflight experience since the 1930s, when the first commercial airliners took to the skies. By the mid-20th century, it had become an important point of difference between competing airlines. An early incarnation of the Delta Air Lines Royal Service included free-flowing champagne and canapés; according to Flavour of Flight by author and pilot Al Bridger, British Airways offered ’50s customers a “Flight Champagne Supper” featuring a Bordeaux, a Burgundy and Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne. 

In these rather more abstemious times, a single glass of champagne “may be the only thing that people drink”, says Charles Metcalfe, head judge of Cellars in the Sky, so an airline needs to make that one glass count. I certainly remember being bowled over by the offer of Krug on a first-class ANA flight to Japan. It’s even more impressive, though, if the cabin crew clearly know their wines as well. The Emirates training programme is one of the most rigorous. Its new three-tiered “L’art du vin” course sees first-class staff schooled in 1855 Bordeaux classifications and top Burgundy crus; they’re also versed in food and wine matching, and wines including Château d’Yquem, Ornellaia and Dom Pérignon P2.

Gusbourne Fifty One Degrees North 2016, available soon on British Airways

Dom Pérignon Plénitude 2 2003, among Emirates’ offering

Private jet operator Flexjet will go the extra mile and arrange sommelier-led champagne tastings for passengers in flight. And when it comes to food and wine matching, no combination is too weird. “We have had some very specific requests for champagne pairings, including a tuna sandwich and chicken tikka masala,” says CEO Andrew Collins. Even at 35,000ft, it seems, the customer is always right. 

@alicelascelles