Speaking of wine, some varieties, however outstanding on terra ferma, may lose their edge as soon as they are up in the air, says Liam Steevenson, the head of UK wine distributor Red & White, who is also one of the senior wine buyers at grocery chain Waitrose. The company used to supply business-only airline Silverjet for two years with the wine to go with the menu designed by the restaurant Le Caprice. That involved a lot of tasting and assessment of wines on the ground and then in the air, while Steevenson himself worked as a consultant for Silverjet.
“Wines that on the ground taste quite fruity, suddenly taste thin, tannic and acidic,” says Steevenson. “Wines certainly thin out and become much leaner and more structured. Liquids expand and contract according to atmospheric pressure and therefore perhaps this is what is happening to the wine. The mid-palate is tasting less fruity as the pressure changes.”
To deal with the issue, airlines have to select wines that are fruity with low acid and low tannin. “This is not always easy – champagne is high in acid and lots of people want to drink champagne on board,” says Steevenson. “Claret is tannic and sometimes acidic – again lots of business travellers want Bordeaux – so in my mind all these buying decisions have to be made whilst thinking about what will happen to them in the air.”
And because very low humidity changes our palate perceptions, it is “probably best to drink wine early in the flight rather than towards the end, when we have dried out considerably more,” he adds. “As we dry, out taste buds become less effective.”