If you read some airline advertisements these days, you would think that many jets were equipped with wine cellars. One Lufthansa advertisement extols its in-flight chardonnays. Korean Air advertises its first-class service with a seductively lighted bottle of French Champagne. One recent United Airlines ad promotes the airline’s international first class by saying that Dom Perignon, the French monk who invented Champagne, “is still flying with us today.”
As many airlines scale back or eliminate meals on many short- and medium-haul flights, why are they touting their in-flight wines in costly magazine and newspaper advertisements? Because fine wines are another marketing lure to attract high-profit business and first-class passengers, particularly on long international routes.
Unfortunately, the airlines’ often-superb wine offerings don’t extend to the coach cabin. “On most domestic flights over two hours, I have been offered overpriced wine in screw-top quarter-bottles that I would not recommend to my customers,” says Kevin Grace, wine floor manager at Sam’s Wines & Spirits in Chicago. “That’s a shame, because the airlines could greatly increase the quality of their coach wines for just a few pennies per serving.
“The one exception to the generally mediocre coach wines is Midwest Express. On a recent flight from Milwaukee to Boston, the flight attendants served Guenoc chardonnay and Beaulieu Vineyards cabernet out of full-size bottles. I have never seen such good wine served on a domestic flight.”
Still, on most carriers’ transcontinental and international flights, the business and first-class wine services are impressive. This January, the first-class wine list on American Airlines’ Chicago-to-London flights included a grand-cru French Chablis, a Silverado Napa Valley chardonnay, a Chateau Duhart Milon Rothschild red Bordeaux and a William Hill reserve cabernet sauvignon–plus a Pommery Madame Louise Champagne, a Sandeman Character medium-dry sherry, and a Graham Malvedos vintage port.
Not surprisingly, Air France’s Concorde flights between New York and Paris have some of the best wines in the skies, including a Beaune Greves Vigne de L’Enfant Jesus, a Chassagne Montrachet Les Morgeots, a Chateau Cantenac Brown, a Corton Charlemagne, plus Champagne and a Sauternes dessert wine.
“This is an extremely impressive offering,” Grace says. “It’s all domaine-bottled, single-vineyard wines that cost $30 to $40 a bottle and up.”
Large U.S. and foreign carriers serve huge quantities of wine. Every year, United Airlines buys approximately 300,000 cases of wine–plus 7,000 cases of the Dom Perignon served in its international first class cabin. American Airlines purchases 400,000 cases of wine annually.
How do the airlines choose the wines for their high-flying cellars? “Throughout the year, we put out feelers–or `tenders’–to selected wineries,” says Richard P. Vine, associate professor of enology at Purdue University and wine consultant to American Airlines. “We go after specific products, usually from wineries we already know.
“I visit wineries in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, talk to the winemakers, taste the wines when they are young, and extrapolate what they will be like when we need them,” Vine says. “If I find a grand cru French red Burgundy that I like at a small producer, and the price is right, I try to buy the entire production, maybe several hundred cases. Then we age it for a few years, until it’s ready to drink on the planes.”
In making his purchases, Vine considers flavor, food matchings, availability, cost and destinations.
“For example, we wouldn’t fly Italian wines to France,” Vine says, “any more than we’d fly only U.S. and French wines to Argentina or Chile. Because it serves so many international destinations, American has several dozen different wine lists for its business and first class cabins.”
United Airlines follows a different strategy.
“Rather than work with a familiar group of producers, we take a `state-fair’ approach,” says California wine judge and writer Bob Thompson, who directs United’s Cellar Committee. “We do blind tastings with a panel that’s divided between experts and person-in-the-street tasters. That way we don’t get flawed wines. And we don’t get wines that only an expert can love. All judges must agree that the wine is OK. Then, we check into availability.”
Airliners are not the best environment for wine appreciation, so Vine looks for “boldness and intensity in color, flavor and aftertaste,” he says. “An airplane cabin is not your dining room at home. The cabin is pressurized to an approximately 10,000-foot elevation. The air is quite dry, so your nasal passages dry out. Under these conditions, delicate wines will taste quite neutral, so I have to avoid them. But if you buy wines that are intense on the ground, they will show well in the air.”
United follows the same basic standards in evaluating its wines. “We don’t want to challenge the passengers unduly,” Thompson says. “We look for fine wines that are accessible, enjoyable, and easy to love.”
These days, most U.S. and foreign carriers change their wine lists frequently, so that frequent fliers don’t see the same selections flight after flight. The airlines also are looking beyond the familiar wines. More lists include wines from Oregon and Washington State, flavorful white wines from France’s Loire Valley and Alsace, and robust reds from the Rhone Valley.
Some foreign carriers highlight wines made in their home country as a way to support their wine industry and introduce passengers to their national products.
“European visitors often comment about the average or mediocre California wines served in coach on U.S. carriers,” Grace says. “It’s really too bad that we don’t promote our better wines more strongly.”
Once airlines have purchased their vast quantities of wines from around the world, they have to distribute the bottles throughout their far-flung route systems.
“United stores most of its wine under ideal conditions in a temperature-controlled warehouse in Oakland,” Thompson says. “But eventually those bottles must go out into the world. United has 120 flight kitchens around the world, everywhere from Chicago to Hong Kong. The wines must be stored in the field for a while before they are loaded onto the planes before each flight. Those temporary storage conditions aren’t always ideal. That’s why we buy wines that are enjoyable and durable.”
Serving wines properly is another challenge. Each major airline has thousands of flight attendants who can’t all become wine experts. But they can be knowledgeable about what they offer their passengers. Most airlines include basic wine information as part of their training, with more specialized programs for international service.
The airlines’ attention to wine has its downside for passengers who are fortunate enough to be wined and dined in business or first class. Alcohol packs a bigger punch in the air, and it dehydrates passengers and exacerbates jet lag. Such drawbacks, though they may seem a small price to pay for sampling some of the world’s finest wines, can be countered. Drink plenty of water during the flight, get up and walk around, and, most important, know when to wave off that third glass of Champagne.
