A Winemaker Finished a Cabernet at 35,000 Feet

Airlines have long said that altitude changes how wine tastes: cabin pressure and dry air dull the nose and shift the balance of fruit and tannin. United and Sonoma’s Aperture Cellars are now building a wine around that fact. In September, founder and winemaker Jesse Katz did the final blending of a custom Cabernet Sauvignon on a flight from New York to San Francisco.

Rather than taking a finished wine and hoping it survives the trip, Katz tasted the individual components in the sky and chose the blend based on how each one expressed itself at cruising altitude. The project, called Air and Vine, was announced in late September as the first wine blended in flight.

The final blend is 76 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 12 percent Malbec, 6 percent Merlot, 4 percent Petit Verdot and 2 percent Cabernet Franc. It is a 2024 vintage aged 24 months in French oak barrels, 40 percent of them new, with fruit from Aperture’s Farrow Ranch estate vineyard in Geyserville.

Passengers will have to wait. United says the wine will be served in Polaris business class on select international routes starting in 2028. The airline had already added an Aperture Cabernet to its Polaris wine list last year, so this is a deepening of an existing relationship, and a sign that premium cabin dining is becoming a marketing arena of its own. Katz framed it as extending winemaking to the place where the wine is actually experienced.

Sources: Wine Industry Advisor, Upgraded Points