Malaysia Airlines wins three prestigious awards at Business Traveller’s ‘Cellars in the Sky’ 2012

Malaysia Airlines continued its award winning trait by scooping three prestigious accolades at the ‘Cellars in the Sky 2012’ awards event held at the Dorchester Hotel, London last week.

The Malaysian national carrier bagged the first prize in two categories, Best First Class Cellar and Best First Class Red Wine for Schubert Marion’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, 2010, Wairarapa, Martinborough, New Zealand. In addition, the airlines emerged as the runner-up in the Best First Class Sparkling category for Champagne Dom Pérignon, 2003, France.

The 2012 international wine awards event was organised by the Business Traveller publication to announce the results of a series of wine tastings done on entries submitted by 33 global air carriers.

Blind tastings of the wines served to Business and First Class passengers by these airlines took place in December 2012 at the Brigade Bar and Bistro, London, with four judges independently scoring the wines.

The judges were: Charles Metcalfe, co-chairman of the International Wine Challenge and food and wine matching guru; Sam Harrop, Master of Wine and international winemaking consultant; Tim Atkin, Master of Wine and award-winning wine columnist; and Peter McCombie, Master of Wine and top restaurant wine consultant.

Malaysia Airlines decides on its wines for inflight service by first sourcing from various reputable brands, and then conducting a blind-tasting by a panel of wine experts and sommeliers, frequent travellers, food and beverage professionals, as well as Malaysia Airlines’ Wine Ambassadors, the airlines very own cabin crew members.

The line-up then is further fine-tuned to reflect the current selection. Besides evaluating the taste and quality of wines, the panel also takes into consideration how the wines will taste differently at an altitude of 30,000 feet.

The selected premium wines are offered to passengers on all Malaysia Airlines’ international routes covering London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and major cities in Australia, New Zealand, North Asia and South Asia.

Winning these wine awards has set off Malaysia Airlines on a course to continuously improve its offerings to passengers in line with efforts to build itself as a preferred premium carrier.

Previous similar efforts last year include the entry of the A380 into its fleet and its Five-Star Airline status renewed by Skytrax UK, as well as winning awards for the World’s Best Cabin Staff and Best Airline Signature Dish from Skytrax.

The A380 currently operates twice daily between London and Kuala Lumpur and will commence daily services between Kuala Lumpur-Paris from 1 March 2013.

On 1 February 2013, Malaysia Airlines become a member of the oneworld alliance and together with the above product and services upgrades, the ‘Cellars in the Sky’ recognition positions the carrier as an award winning partner in the alliance.

Malaysia Airlines’ addition to oneworld will expand the alliance’s global coverage to more than 840 destinations in 155 countries, served by some 9,000 departures a day operated by a combined fleet of some 2,500 aircraft, carrying nearly 340 million passengers a year, with annual revenues of US$ 110 billion.