'Whining Oenophiles' Heard

One of the best things about the Concorde, we're told, was the service. Really good food, super-attentive crew, and the best wines in the air made the already-short trans-Atlantic crossings seem even shorter.

The wine collection was started in the late 1980s, to provide a suitable complement to the food; British Air research found that passengers wanted a champagne, a claret, and a white burgundy. BA's buyers responded, and bought lovely selections of each, which were guarded in environmentally-controlled vaults at Heathrow, with smaller, similar caches to be found in Barbados, New York, and Toronto.

Galley space constraints limited each in-flight selection to just three possibilities; but the selection was constantly rotated, and the roughly $200/bottle wines and champagnes were adequate, to satify the upscale PAX.

There was art, in addition to science, in the selection of the offerings; some wines have been found to taste really lousy at altitude, especially in an airplane's cabin. The scientific community is still wondering why a particular wine can taste just fine at sea level, or even at 8000 feet in a mountain chateau, yet be unpalatable in an airplane, at that 8000-foot cabin altitude. The dryness of cabin air, contaminants that aren't otherise noticed -- nobody has the answer; the taste, though, is unmistakable.

Anyway, the Concorde's cellars will not be sold at auction, as was the original plan. Patrons have convinced BA to sell the Concorde's wines on regular flights. Whether the cellars will be restocked will depend on passenger acceptance.

FMI: www.britishairways.com