Getting On Top of Wine's Altitude Problem

(WSJ) -  WE ALL DREAM of flying first class. Admit it, when the plane pushes back from the gate and begins its taxi to the runway, those of us not quite as close to the cockpit as we had hoped begin to entertain envious thoughts about those up front, sipping vintage Champagne and nibbling their smoked salmon and Osetra caviar.

I'm one of those who still experience a little pang of excitement as the catering trolley makes its way down the aisle. But such has been the downgrading of air travel in recent years that food is no longer a given, let alone wine. To compound matters, modern aviation regulations mean the oenophile hasn't a hope of bringing his favorite bottle on board.

I'm always reminded of the final scene of "Hannibal" (2001) when Anthony Hopkins, flying in economy, takes delivery of a Dean & Deluca hamper complete with a half-bottle of 1996 Château Phélan Ségur from Saint-Estèphe, an assortment of fruits, caviar and cheese and, infamously, a tiny pot of brain.

Not that I would recommend drinking such a delicate wine in such a small glass at 35,000 feet. Wines taste very different in the air; a combination of altitude and low humidity tends to accentuate a wine's acidity and alcohol. Meanwhile, the cabin's dry atmosphere will make the tannins—the bitter-tasting compounds found in red wine—more pronounced. And it's not just the wines that are affected. The way we taste things also changes at altitude. As the recycled cabin air dries the mucus in our nasal passages, our sense of smell diminishes, wreaking havoc with our olfactory appreciation.