Cathay Pacific Bridges The World of Chinese Wine With In-Flight Offerings

The airline is based in Hong Kong and is a primary carrier from America's West Coast into HKG. Cathay Pacific Airways was originally established as a joint-venture between an American and an Australian in September of 1946. They are a founding member of the Oneworld Alliance, and is ranked as a 5-star airline. Four times they have also been ranked as the world's best airline by Skytrax. Having the regional pride to show-off wines of their country to travelers coming from great distances shows the dedication to hospitality that defines the prowess of Cathay Pacific.

What goes into selecting wine experiences for a traveller on Cathay Pacific?

The Cathay Pacific wine team is focused on enriching and enhancing the customer journey by offering wines that complement the flying and dining experience, as well as delight and surprise customers on their journey.

Hence, extensive research goes into shortlisting wine to find the correct fit for the wine portfolio. Several times throughout the year, the airline organizes wine tastings with the consulting panel and I for up to 350 bottles.

Wines submitted by producers are poured for preliminary tasting. We make the final decision based on a wine’s quality, brand image, reliability of the producer, and a few other logistical and commercial considerations.

Shortlisted wines are re-poured blind to evaluate for final selection. Together, we agree on seven promising bottles. In 2023, more than 700 bottles of wines were sampled, with more than 60-80 bottles selected at each tasting chosen for inclusion in flight over the coming months.

How do you make each cabin's offerings memorable?

Cathay Pacific has four cabin categories – Economy, Premium Economy, Business and First classes. Food, wine, seating, services and amenities are all carefully and thoughtfully designed to offer the best possible experience at each tier.

Economy class is often the most significant challenge; this cabin holds the largest number of customers. Therefore, we are trying to please many palates while maintaining a good level of cost control to ensure accessible pricing, all while working with reliable producers. Since 2023, we worked with Accolade Wines, Australia’s second largest producer to upgrade our Economy class white and red wines. We are now serving the Grant Burge Benchmark series wines from South Australia.

In 2023, we were thrilled to introduce a sparkling wine to Premium Economy class. We generally aim for approachable, ripe fruit in red wines and crisp, refreshing flavours in white wines.

Business class is an ideal environment for wines that blend adventure and high quality. Business travellers are usually the most frequent and loyal travellers, and as such, they like to see both their favourite regions and something new and exciting. Typically, a Business class flight will comprise one Champagne, two white wines, two red wines and a dessert wine. Our passengers are partial to French wines – who isn’t? – so we always ensure top French selections are on board.

First class is the ultimate luxury, and the wines chosen must fit this experience. At any one time, two Champagnes, two white wines, three red wines and one dessert wine will be offered, generally comprising carefully selected vintages and wines from the world’s most esteemed producers. We also provide luscious Sauternes or Port to complete the dining experience. Guests in the First class cabin are usually very discerning regarding food and beverage, and accustomed to regular five-star dining.

Do wines taste different at flying elevation versus at ground level?

The necessity of a pressurized cabin significantly impacts a number of our senses. Lack of humidity, low air pressure, and even background noise are all contributing factors (recent studies have shown that taste is highly susceptible to external factors like noise, which may surprise many people!)

The lack of ambient moisture in the cabin dries out our noses, diminishing our sense of smell and effectively numbing our taste buds. Since 80% of taste comes from smell, the dry cabin environment has a significant impact.

It is generally recognised that the flying environment affects sweetness, saltiness, acidity and umami. Sweet and salty flavours are typically dulled, while umami and acidity are heightened.

So, when tasting wines for inflight, we must adjust our quality control radars and compensate for these elements. Wines with crisp acidity on the ground may be pushed into a less pleasant state when flying. Equally, wines that may seem too robust on the ground may adapt very well to the cabin, as they may become more balanced by atmospheric conditions in the air.

Being a Hong Kong based airline, how do you go about selecting Chinese wines for the inbound HKG flights?

Chinese wines undergo the same rigorous selection process as global wines. We invite wineries to submit samples, which are then tasted in the same way all wines are evaluated for quality on the ground and in the air.

Are you seeing a growing interest in Chinese wines?

Certainly in Asia, the interest in Chinese wines is growing. Internationally, discerning wine lovers have also had their interest piqued by the massive investment by top French Chateaux and blue ribbon Australian producers like Penfolds. 

Cathay’s Discovery Wine series is a quarterly feature that introduces wines from all over the world to our customers. Chinese wines were part of a recent Discovery Wine series, and it was so popular with our guests that we were asked to extend it by one month. I think this shows the interest in Chinese wines!

As one would expect for a new industry, it has taken time to achieve the impressive quality we are seeing in some Chinese wines today. Pioneers like Judy Chan (Grace Vineyards), Emma Gao (Silver Heights) and others have worked tirelessly for decades to establish and maintain high-quality standards in the vineyard and winery. To this day, they continue to experiment with grape varieties (both international and those indigenous to Asia), production techniques (such as amphora) and exploring existing and potential terroirs to improve their wine quality, adapt to changing consumer tastes and mitigate the ever-evolving climatic conditions of the modern wine-growing era.

It is now very common to see the top Chinese wines on five-star menus in Hong Kong and, of course, in the Chinese Mainland’s trend-setting cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Guangzhou. And, in fact, Singapore, Tokyo and other trendy Asian capitals.

What trends are you noticing as far as wines consumed during flights?

Champagnes, red Bordeaux and white Burgundy are still very popular on our flights followed by our Discovery Wine series which highlight unique blends and regions from around the world.

Visit cathaypacific.com to learn more about flights and their wine offerings.