Just did a bit of British Airways lounge wine sampling (BA Galleries lounge at terminal 3). These are wines available in business class. How good are they? The answer: not bad, but not very exciting. Unfortunately, like many airlines, I suspect BA have very little budget to spend on wine, and this selection shows it. The best business class selection I have come across is Air New Zealand, where they use the opportunity they have to showcase the best Kiwi wines. Even their economy class selection is quite good. I’ve not done Singapore business class for a long time, but that used to be quite smart. I’ve yet to fly anything other than economy with Emirates, but I imagine this selection would be interesting.
Tim Adams Foxlee Single Vineyard Riesling 2014 Clare Valley, Australia
This is a well balanced, fruit-driven Riesling with attractive citrus fruit. No real surprises, just a balanced, focused citrussy dry Riesling showing nice purity and a faint hint of mint/eucalypt. 88/100
Catena La Consulta Malbec 2015 Mendoza, Argentina
Sweetly fruited and supple with a fine, slightly green edge to the floral cherry and blackberry fruit. There’s a silky smoothness to the texture of this ripe wine, which is sweet and alluring but still in balance. Easy and enjoyable, but not trivial. 89/100
Casas del Bosque Carménère 2014 Rapel Valley, Chile
Juicy and very fruity with good varietal character, which here takes the form of smooth, sweet, autumnal dark fruits and a chalky graininess. This is sleek and smooth with a seductive quality. A bit ripe and warm, perhaps, but tasty. 88/100
Grant Burge Barossa Shiraz 2015 Australia
Warm, rich and spicy with some coconut, spice and vanilla oak influence adding detail to the ripe black fruits. A little old-school in style, meshing very ripe dense fruit with fairly obvious oak, but not without appeal. Creamy and rich with a seductive quality. 87/100
First class is just as dire
Interesting post – Part of me just wonders if you would have rated the wines as “low” if tasted blind at some wino’s dinner somewhere. Either way I’m sure these are the sort of wines most people would enjoy, which I guess is the point in the BA lounge. Sadly not everyone’s a wine nut.
Hmmmmmmmm. Hardly the point. Try CX in HKG or SG lounges anywhere . This is the HQ and supposedly best lounge of BA. Not the world favourite airline
Not sure I agree with you on this one Keith. I think these wines are fine for business class, whilst you wait for your connection or whatever. If they had anything much more expensive – with the current pay-related strikes going on – I might be thinking they had their priorities wrong. If they had anything much whackier, it might polarise customers. This is a safe choice for a glorified bus stop. It’s not a wine bar.