Lufthansa ® - Fine wines

Fine wines

glass of red wine

Vinothek Discoveries

Are you already familiar with Vinothek Discoveries - our award-winning wine programme? Enjoy the excellent wines which, together with world champion sommelier Markus del Monego, we have selected especially for you as a passenger in First or Business Class.

Markus Del Monego

Markus Del Monego was named sommelier world champion by international wine experts. He supports Lufthansa with Vinothek Discoveries and puts together a new selection of exciting wines every two months.

Exclusively on behalf of our passengers, he travels the world searching for very special wines for you to enjoy on board. On all intercontinental flights, our First and Business Class passengers are offered a wine list with detailed descriptions, origin and vintage of each wine.

Facts and figures about Lufthansa’s wine selection

Each year we issue 30-35 invitations to tender.
We receive suggestions for the tenders from specialist magazines and online, via trade fairs, wine tastings, talks to specialist groups and recommendations.
Our criteria for selecting the wine correspond to our customers’ wishes and market trends.
The selection is not made on the basis of the label or the name, but purely on the basis of the quality of the wine: at 10 – 12 meetings a year a committee of external and internal wine experts, together with Markus Del Monego, evaluate the wines in a blind tasting using an international 20-point system.
During the wine tastings we make sure that the wines have the right character and that they fulfil the requirements to be served on board our flights:
- We give preference to wines with reduced acidity or wines containing less tannin.
- We use wines with somewhat more residual sugar and/or a higher level of alcohol, as residual sugar and alcohol appear weaker at altitude.

10 years of "Vinothek Discoveries" - a success story

10 years of This September and October - after 12,000 wines tasted, 115 wine-tasting days and seven wine tours - "Vinothek Discoveries" is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

In order to include a wine in its on-board wine list, Lufthansa requires around 8,000 bottles of one variety every two months for serving in First Class. In Business Class it needs a quantity of some 40,000 bottles and in Economy Class at least 200,000 litres of wine per grape variety are served every four to six months.

In 2009 alone, Lufthansa served 2.6 million litres of wine. In the same year Lufthansa’s wine selection won the award for "Most Consistent Wine list" in the Business Traveller Wine Awards.

We are looking forward to offering you an extensive choice of top-quality wines in First and Business Class in the next 10 years too.