Bubbling to the top

Time for Qantas and Virgin to showcase Australian sparkling wine onboard

Both Qantas and Virgin Australia have an excellent history of bringing some of Australia’s best wines into the cabin and across the world, and they should be praised for that. But the fact remains that the quality sparkling wine on board is still French Champagne. In 2015, it’s a reasonable argument that some of Australia’s best sparkling wines are just as good as Champagne, and should at least be provided alongside French fizz, even if they don’t replace it entirely.

The UK’s Virgin Atlantic, which serves the world’s most discerning market for wine – and in particular sparkling wine – has recently sent shockwaves through the wine world by selecting an English sparkling for the top offering on its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft. These are aircraft with a lower 6,000ft cabin altitude (compared with the 8,000ft of previous generations of jets), and the extra two thousand feet seems like the tipping point where British fizz gets the tastebuds racing.