One Red, One White at 30,000 Feet

365 Days

Posted 05/04/2008 at 06:03 PM by Cathy

I was on my way to the airport today when a friend of mine – a very good friend – tucked a few vouchers for free alcoholic beverages into my pocket. United Airlines' wine list isn't exactly renown but, en route from Boston to San Francisco, I didn't mind the distraction.

There were two options, a white and a red, both handed to me in 187 ml bottles (about two glasses) with plastic cups. I unscrewed the cap on the white, a 2007 Chardonnay Clásico from Ventisquero winery in the Casablanca Valley of Chile. Chilean whites had been popping up on my radar quite a lot lately, mostly as Sauvignon Blancs, so I was curious to try a Chardonnay. The red wine was a Merlot from Gallo's Twin Valley estate in California; I couldn't remember the last time I've had a wine from Gallo so I was curious (okay, curious enough) about this one.

It's almost unfair to serve wine on an airplane, especially in economy class. You can't smell anything much – ever try to describe a wine's bouquet when your nose is stuck in an eight-ounce plastic cup? You can't see anything much – the colors are distorted by the weird artificial lighting and the uneven natural lighting. And my sense of taste was completely off-kilter.

Did I like these wines? No, I didn't. But they're at a serious disadvantage 30,000 feet up in the air, and I promise not to hold this experience against them once I'm earth-bound again.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.