RAISE A GLASS
In a challenging year, the winners of our in-flight wine awards still managed to serve up some sensational bottles
42 WOR D S HA NNA H BR A NDL E R L MAY/JUNE 20 2 1
ate last year, some of the world’s finest wine experts convened to judge our annual Cellars in the Sky awards. Our panel – masters of wine Sarah Abbott, Tim Atkin and Peter McCombie and head judge Charles Metcalfe, co-chairman of the International Wine Challenge – once again returned to select the best bottles served
in business and first class in 2020. Cellars in the Sky has been running since 1985 and,
despite everything that came to pass, 2020 marked no exception. In true pandemic style the judges were careful to abide by social distancing rules, with Metcalfe joining in with the two days of tastings from home via Zoom. Te circumstances may have changed but the quality of wines was as high as ever and the judges’ discussions just as animated.
HOW THE AWAR DS WORK Te competition is open to any carrier that serves wine in business or first class on mid- or long-haul routes. Each airline is invited to enter two reds, two whites, a rosé, a sparkling, and a fortified or dessert wine from both cabins. Tey can compete in as many categories as they like but to be eligible for the Best Overall Cellar award they had to enter at least one red, white and sparkling.
All of the tasting is done blind, with the branding of
the bottles hidden beneath black bags labelled with a letter and two numbers – FC1, for instance, means the first flight of first-class white wines, with the number differentiating each entry. Te judges were unaware of the wine make or the airline that entered it, eliminating any unconscious bias. “It’s quite unusual to be so monkish about it that you only pay attention to the taste,” Abbott noted – thankfully, our judges’ senses of taste and smell were not impaired. I watched from a safe distance as they sampled the
wines from their respective stations, noting down their findings – cue adjectives such as “expressive”, “aromatic” and “alluring” – before digging into a plate of crackers to cleanse their palate before proceeding. Each judge had their own spittoon to fend off any impending headaches. In previous years, the judges paired up and tasted
half of the entries for each flight. Both teams would put forward their favourite bottles before re-tasting the final selection and awarding Gold, Silver, Bronze and, occasionally, Highly Commended. Tis year marked a first in the history of Cellars in the Sky, with each judge tasting every single entry individually – a silver lining of social distancing – before convening to review the wines and mark them out of 100.
bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om
CHALABALA/ISTOCK
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