Tiny Bottles in the Sky

You’re on vacation, relaxing in your coach-class seat at 40,000 feet. What ho, it’s mealtime. Some wine would fit in nicely here.

So what do most airlines do? They tell you nothing about the wines they have. They offer only wines of modest-to-poor quality, at outrageous prices, and serve them in plastic cups. And then they have the chutzpah to tell you to enjoy yourself.

Come again?

With few exceptions, wine has always been an afterthought in coach class. Name-brand vodka, Cognac, whiskey and beer are routinely served aloft, but wine is the stepchild of airline beverages.

One reason is packaging. The best wine comes in 750-milliliter bottles sealed with corks. But corkscrews, being nasty little gadgets that give many people fits, are inappropriate for flight attendants in coach, who have to serve 100 people.

“I’d love to use regular bottles,” says one airline executive, “but it’s always easier for a flight attendant to hand over a 187 (-milliliter bottle).”

The few wineries that make 187-ml bottles for air service dominate the field. Most of the wine for U.S. domestic coach-class service comes from either Fetzer Vineyards, Glen Ellen Winery, Sutter Home Winery, Wente Bros., Sebastiani Vineyards, Columbia Crest or four Heublein brands: from the Napa Valley, Rutherford Estate (a second label of Inglenook) and Beaulieu Vineyards “Beautour” and from the San Joaquin Valley, Inglenook Navalle and Blossom Hill Winery (a spinoff of Almaden Vineyards).

Another key point: Airlines rarely pay more than $1 a serving for wines aimed at coach class. On average, U.S. airlines pay 40 cents and 70 cents each for coach-class wine. They charge $3 a serving for the equivalent of one-fourth of a standard bottle.

This is like paying $12 for a full-sized bottle of wine that sells at retail shops for about $3.50. So coach passengers are getting soaked, but there’s little alternative; federal law prohibits you from bringing alcoholic beverages aboard planes leaving the United States.

A decade ago, Inglenook Navalle accounted for more than half of all airline wine sales. “(Inglenook) wanted the exposure,” says one industry insider. “It was a captive audience that drank more in the air than they did on the ground.” And so, the winery offered airlines a good price: The insider says airlines would pay $6 for 24-bottle packages of the flat Inglenook bottles (called ponies)--or 25 cents per serving--then charge passengers $2 for wine that was usually fairly poor.

Things have gotten better in recent years, but competition is still mostly limited to huge wineries--not just because they’re willing to bottle their wine in 187-ml bottles, but because they are best equipped to fill the massive orders that the airlines require.

No one knows precisely how many cases of wine were sold on U.S.-based air carriers last year, but Russell Woodbury, founder of a firm called Airwine (which he sold a few years ago), guesses that about 1 million cases is a close figure.

Gary Wilson, wine buyer for American Airlines, says this year his company expects to sell 100,000 cases of wine (48 quarter-size bottles to a case), or 4.8 million servings. That corresponds to about 10% of the firm’s passenger base (of course some passengers order more than one serving).

California wine dominates American air service, partly because of wine quality, partly because of price and partly because of its bottling equipment.

Wine in small bottles deteriorates quickly (Richard Vine, American’s wine consultant, says red wine in the smaller 187-ml bottles is best consumed within six months of bottling, white wine within three months), so larger airlines now ask wineries to bottle smaller amounts on a monthly basis. Some wineries bottle every other week for major airline accounts.

Vine says he works as hard to get wines for coach as for first class. Most coach-class flights on American offer 1990 Fetzer Vineyards Fume Blanc “Valley Oaks” and 1989 Wente Bros. Cabernet Sauvignon “Estate Reserve.” “It took a lot of work to get Wente to bottle its Estate Reserve Cabernet in smaller bottles,” he says. “They were concerned about deterioration in the little bottles, but they did a good job of scheduling bottlings.”

Of course, the best wine is served in first class. Vine says on domestic transcontinental flights American serves eight wines, including Ferrari-Carano Vineyards Fume Blanc; Chardonnays from Acacia Winery, William Hill Winery and Sterling Vineyards; and Cabernets from Chimney Rock Winery and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. He says international flights also carry Spanish Sherry.

United has hired a professional wine judge, Bob Thompson, who stages double-blind tastings of wines submitted by wineries. The second tasting, with United’s cellar committee, aims to find the best wine regardless of variety. “We blind taste under ‘game’ conditions to find a wine that tastes good in those conditions,” Thompson says. The current wines in United coach class are 1990 Glen Ellen Chardonnay and Fetzer Cabernet Sauvignon “Bel Arbors.”

United’s Wilson says first-class passengers choose Chardonnays from Landmark Vineyards, William Wheeler and Kenwood Vineyards, and Cabernet Sauvignons from Fremont Creek Winery, Congress Springs Vineyards, Villa Mt. Eden, Louis M. Martini Winery (“Reserve”) and Estancia Vineyards.

Alaska Airlines has one of the better programs. Excellent wine from Columbia Crest is complimentary in coach class, and it’s bottled frequently, so the stock is fresh.

Still, if you really want good wine service on an airplane, book yourself an international flight. “One of the battlegrounds on which serious competition between great airlines takes place,” says Peter Bowler, American’s food and beverage director, “is in the international arena, and this is particularly true of our premium cabins, first and business class.” Industry executives admit that the best wine and food available in the air today is on routes to South America, Tokyo and Europe.

American now serves 1985 Chateau Duhart-Milon-Rothschild, 1990 Joseph Drouhin Chassagne-Montrachet and 1990 Moreau Chablis on overseas first class. Says Vine: “This kind of thing attracts wine-avid passengers. These are people with the ability to fly in the upper classes, and this is the market I want to address.”

Wine of the Week

1989 Seghesio Winery Zinfandel ($7.50)-- Zinfandel has been making a resurgence after a period during which it went through a variety of styles, many of them clumsy, with high alcohol levels. The most successful current Zinfandels are lighter, more elegant, with good raspberryish fruit, softer tannins and more modest alcohol content.

This wine is a good example of that lighter, more elegant style. It has enough oak to let you know that it’s there, but not so much that it covers the excellent fruit and faint chocolate notes. The best part of this wine is its structure, which is gentle and generous in fruit.

Because 1989 was a lighter vintage in California, winemaker Ted Seghesio chose not to make a reserve Zinfandel, blending the best lots of estate-grown grapes from the Alexander and Dry Creek valleys and aging the wine in a combination of French and American oak. It is excellent to drink now, but because of a tiny dollop of Petite Sirah added to the blend, the wine will probably be better with another year of aging. Expect to find it in the $6.50 range in most discount shops.