Have wine with lunch (if there is lunch) on one of America's airlines these days and you might be surprised at what you end up sipping.
You might fly tourist and get a wine that would retail for $12.98 a bottle. You might fly first class and get one that would sell in stores for $4.99.
Some will be wonderful, some will make you want to go back to beer.
And unlike the case with airline food, they won't let you bring your own wine.
Still, it's likely that the airline went to a lot of trouble choosing it for you.
A blind tasting at The Miami Herald of about 20 wines served in tourist class by U.S. airlines in those little 187-milliliter bottles (about one-quarter of a regular bottle) found major fluctuation. On a scale of 1 (pretty bad) to 5 (really nice), the wines scored from 1 to 4, with half of them scoring only a 1 or 2.
The tasting was done by this reporter, who is also The Herald's wine columnist, and Fred Barger, a veteran wine consultant and salesman at Crown Wine & Spirits.
There also is big variation in how the airlines choose the wines. Some ask for submissions from wine brokers and hold tastings to narrow down as many as 350 offerings to half a dozen. Others have a single wine expert who ferrets out wine bargains from California to France to Australia.
At US Airways, for example, executives ask their vendors once a year to submit the wines they carry, and the airline sets up a blind tasting of about 350 wines, says Michael Stubbins, the airline's food and beverage manager. About 325 of those wines, in the higher price categories, are considered for first class, and about 25 more inexpensive wines are considered for tourist class.
The tasting is done by a panel of seven or eight sippers including American execs, top-ranking frequent fliers, sometimes wine experts. For first class, American picks the top 10 wines out of the 325 and negotiates price, making the final selection of two to four wines in terms of price and quality, Stubbins says.
For tourist class, it picks the top three of the 25 and negotiates for price.
But times are tough, and budgets have shrunk.
"With all airlines this year, the cost of product really is the prime driver," Stubbins says.
In first class, he adds, US Airways four or five years ago served Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which retails in shops for up to $50 for a full-size bottle. Today the airline serves Canyon Oaks merlot from California, which retails for about $4.99.
In tourist class, US Airways serves Casa Mayor cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay from Chile, which don't have a retail price because they're made specifically for US Airways and not sold in U.S. stores.
The advantage of buying as many as 650,000 little bottles a year, Stubbins says, is that when US Airways tasters decided they would like Casa Mayor's chardonnay a little sweeter, the winery was glad to add a few sugar-rich semillon grapes to the blend.
At American Airlines, all wines are purchased by Richard Vine, a retired professor of oenology at Purdue University and head of the yearly Indianapolis International Wine Competition, which this year judged 3,700 wines.
"My job for the past 21 years has been to seek out what I call 'nuggets' -- wines that are available at good prices. A winery might want to release their 2003 vintage, but still have X number of cases of its 2002 inventory," he says. "You get a better price.
"I do all the tastings, all the selections, all the negotiations." In first class, American Airlines serves such wines as Louis Latour Puligny Montrachet Premier Cru, which would retail for up to $40, and Chateau Cantemerle Bordeaux, which would go for $25.
In tourist class, American serves wines such as Round Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, which would retail for $5.98 per regular bottle, and Wild Horse Zinfandel, which would retail for $12.98.
But even with all the variation, it's probably not worth it to the average passenger to choose his or her airline based on the wine it serves. And, given the quality of most of the food the airlines is selling onboard, to-die-for wine-food flavor matches aren't very likely in any case.
Better, maybe, to go find a really nice restaurant when you get there.
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