Inside Australia’s wildest wine-tasting event

We all love a cheeky wine-tasting, but an event that sees participants sample 1400 glasses across five days might be too much for many.

Inside 'Wine Week' at the Qantas HQ in Sydney.

Sampling 1400 glasses of wine across five days might sound like the greatest job on earth, but according to celebrity chef Neil Perry, it’s a lot harder than you’d think.

“Everyone thinks it’s an incredibly romantic experience, ‘wow, I get to taste 1400 wines,’ But the truth is it’s really hard work,” Perry, who is Qantas’ Creative Director – Food, Beverage & Service, told news.com.au.

This wild 40-hour wine tasting session is known as ‘Qantas Wine Week’.

It’s where a group of sommeliers gather in the airline’s Sydney headquarters to pick the 500 wines that will be featured on Qantas flights and in Qantas lounges later in the year.

So how does it work?

Each day, the sommeliers do a blind taste test of a different wine variety.

On Monday they might sample chardonnay and riesling, on Tuesday they might tackle shiraz and cabernet sauvignon.

The sommeliers all work independently and give each wine a score out of 10 before comparing notes at the end of the session and picking the ones with the highest scores across the board.

“We try and pace ourselves but at the end of the day you’re pretty fatigued,” Sebastian Crowther, a ‘Master Sommelier’, told news.com.au.

“Your palate gets tired and you get mentally tired because you’ve got to concentrate for each individual wine.”

If you’re wondering how boozed the sommeliers get, well, probably not as boozed as you’d think.

“We spit all the wine out (into a spittoon) but there’s obviously a certain amount of absorption of alcohol that happens throughout the course of the day,” Mr Crowther added.

The sommeliers at work.

The scorecards.

That means that after each eight-hour session, the sommeliers are left feeling a little light-headed despite the fact they haven’t actually swallowed any wine.

“All you need (at the end of each day) is a cold beer and something to eat and you’re asleep,” Mr Crowther said.

Neil Perry, who’s been working with Qantas for 25 years, told news.com.au that ‘Wine Week’ is an important event that ensures travellers get exposed to the very best wines from around the country, from both established brands and up-and-coming producers.

“If you walk into a bottle shop, you’ve got thousands of bottles in front of you and even if you’re getting some great advice, you’re really not sure what to do,” he said.

“But if you taste a wine (during a flight or in a Qantas lounge), you know that when you get home you can either find it in a bottle shop or you can go to a cellar door and buy it.

“That’s why I always call Qantas the shopfront of the Australian wine industry.”