I don't recognise that at all and think you are chasing a stereotype. There is a choice of 3 red and 3 white. Since VS improved the UC meal service, the crew has been noticeably more informed about the wines and it's not uncommon to find that the crew have tasted them (not in-flight!) and can pronounce the names reasonably confidently. I contrast that with an experience in BA F where the crew-member said "I'm not even going to try to say that!" (The word was "frangipane".)

The real criticism of VS is that the wines themselves are pretty dire. But the service usually isn't.

I agree, whilst they are not trained sommeliers, they should have a broad knowledge of wines as their customers will have discerning tastes. On one F flight I asked for a glass of Merlot and the CC response was "is that red or white"! They really should have known something as basic as that.

My husband complained about some very poor service on a domestic flight recently...they came back saying sorry, husband emailed back and they gave us some avios and £50 Highlife vouchers.

What happened on your domestic flight?

No greeting on boarding, over wing exits weren't briefed, asked for an alcoholic drink (politely) I may add and was told in a very angry way "we'll be coming back through with the trolley later!" which of course I knew simply wasn't true. Asked another crew member and was told they only had soft drinks and wasn't offered an alternative. Just the whole attitude of the crew wasn't good. The seat pocket had collapsed under the weight of the magazines and on descent we were snapped at to pick the magazines up and on politely explaining what had happened the crew member just tutted and grabbed them and stuffed them in the overhead.

Also, the seat pockets were filled with the rubbish from a previous flight which as well as being messy also wasn't good from a security point of view! The plane was just generally shabby.

I'm ex crew so know all about challenging passenger behaviour ;) but we were polite to the crew and just got a load of attitude back. :(

Fortunately your experience is definitely still the exception rather than the rule.

Actually I wasn't saying the wine choices were bad or it was just a choice betwen red and white but there may be only 1 decent red and one decent white. I also know that VS offer a similar (albeit weaker) choice of wine, my comment was about the service style I experienced on my first VS J flight in a while a month ago. The crew were great but the wine choices were limited and the crew didn't seem up for discussing the choices and did wear the wine slings for refills which I found rather amusing.

I just wouldn't have thought to ask the crew for wine tips, lovely as they were.

OK that sounds not good. I am assuming that this must have been a breakfast service but even so, the crew should have returned with your requested drink after they had finished serving the food.

What route were you on?

The OP's experience and subsequent feedback from customer services is unacceptable. Whilst safety is of course, the paramount importance, any traveller which pays (or uses a lot of Avios!) to fly in F are doing so because they are expecting a first class, premium service, and the only way that BA or any other airline can achieve this is by training their cabin crew in F in such a manner. Of course, this doesn't seem to represent F in BA generally, but rather, a couple of incompetent people.

LHR-ABZ

That's bad then because there is loads of time on an ABZ to do ad hoc drinks.