DeltaOne wine on menu vs. wine on board - never the same
 

Hi all,
I enjoy a glass of (nice) red wine and despite having given up on getting nice wine, I do still enjoy looking at the wine options on the menu, and picking the option I'd like before drink service comes out.
Over the past two years I probably have had a <40 % rate of actually getting the wine that is on the wine list, and it's frustrating.

Is this me, or is this consistent? Not sure if it applies to the white or sparkling wines.

With the sparkling wine, watch out that FAs don't try to serve you the PDB rather than the real champagne that's listed in the menu.

I noticed recently on a flight around the first of the month that wines from the previous month's menu were available on board, which made sense as presumably the aircraft had been catered with wine before leaving the USA.

Sometimes FAs discover bottles of wine on board that aren't on the list if the aircraft previously flew a route that gets different wine, such as South America.

Is there really that much variation in the menus and the wines? I feel like I've been having this mushroom soup for 3 months now and that the menu I got on ATL-SCL was the exact same fall/winter menu that I got TATL on JFK-LHR?
I did get the thai coconut LHR-JFK soup.

I am an avid user of the vivino app and recall seeing wines that retail at $25+ on Delta 4-5 years ago. Now I see $10-$20 wines mostly.

Also what's the reason again with the PDB being cheaper than the onboard beverage? Is that the tax thing?

Andrea Robinson (think that's her name) who delta touts as their in house som, must be getting paid well because I would be ashamed at the quality of Delta's wine as a professional som. Domestic has become undrinkable in many cases. One would think Delta would have decent quality (quality does not mean expensive) wines flying across country, especially going to any of the Bay Area. Some good Napa or Sonoma wines. Guessing they choose their wines by the budget that are given and large quantity producers fit that bill.

I fly to Greece and Italy yearly. Just once would I like to have a decent Italian/Greek red wine on board when flying to these destinations in Delta One. Before anybody says it, there are high quality Greek reds out there and available in the US

The D1 menu changes every three months. Some regions (South America, different countries in Asia) get different menus. South American flights are much more likely to have wines from Argentina and Chile.

Yes, the PDB sparkling wine (usually a Prosecco) is much worse and much cheaper than the real French champagne that should be served up in the air.

Agree on Andrea Robinson! What a joke by now! And I understand they need huge volumes, and quality doesn't need to be expensive. It's just ridiculous they can't do a better job at planning and stocking so that the running out is an exception, or at least a 20% occurrence, not a 60%+ occurrence.

VS had an interesting wine from Crete I think last month, quite special but good. DL had a barbera d'alba on the menu in November LHR-JFK but as usual "they ran out".

I've wondered why DL hasn't gone with a vendor like 14 Hands or Chateau St Michelle out of Washington, at least for domestic F. Both companies mass produces and both brands can be purchased individually for about $10-$12 a bottle and both make a pretty decent wine for the price. And it'd allow DL the marketing boost of saying they're supporting a wine company in an area they've been heavily marketing in over the past several years (Seattle/Washington). 14 Hands is usually my go-to when picking up a bottle at the store.

I don't believe her name is attached to domestic offerings apart from the handful of transcontinental routes with Delta One service.

I suspect they're paying half that amount (or less) for domestic F bottles.

Of course DL generally negotiates good volume discounts--they don't pay retail prices.

For years, either DL or PMNW had Chateau St Michelle wines on most domestic flights in FC. I still think of it as airplane wine, and not in a good way. Recently D1 had a good single vineyard Chardonnay from St Michelle.

Let's not encourage DL to do some nonsense of featuring wine from near their hubs of DTW, ATL, MSP, or even SLC, let alone certain focus cities like RDU, IND, BOS, etc.

Once upon a time the LAX SC featured some nice California wines, when SCs were permitted to pick their own. In remember Kenwood being a frequent choice.

Anyone know what they typically serve as PDB sparkly? I believe they use Mionetto for the bellinis in economy. I think it's a fine choice, good value at $13-15/bottle retail. (I served it at my wedding :))

What I hate is that when I ask for champagne in business class during the cart drink service, they usually have someone in the galley pour it, so I have no idea what I'm actually being served. Has anyone figured out how to get them to pour at your seat without the FA throwing a hissy? (One time years ago on Continental BusinessFirst - which generally had great service - I asked if I could see the two red choices as the FA only knew "California Red" and "French Red" and there was no menu. She returned and slammed both bottles on my tray table and walked away. :shrug: )

Are they still doing "premium" wines on the JFK-CDG/LHR routes? I remember at one point the inflight bubbly was Charles Heidsieck* which IIRC retails for like $60, but it was something much more basic on JFK-FRA/ZRH.

* NV of course, not the 1995 Blanc des Millenaires which JL First Class uses as their "backup" after the two bottles of ~$500 Salon are emptied (but which I preferred to the Salon anyway, lol, at least at altitude...)

It's not inappropriate to ask to see the bottle, but I've also sent back glasses of sparkling wine that I could tell were the ground junk and not the real French stuff I had specified. Some FAs claim not to know the difference or that ground and air "champagne" are different, but others are just too lazy to open the bottle.

I'll sometimes ask for French red etc. if the cart with wine isn't at my seat as it seems less confusing (and less likely to lead to mistakes) than asking for it by some long name in a foreign language.

You should really check out the Texas section at HEB. :) Becker Indian Summer is my go-to $10-12 bottle, and there are some nice options in the $20 range as well.

I do agree with your point about those options for domestic F. I would imagine DL could pay somewhere from $6-8 per bottle for those brands with the quantities they would purchase.

Can you imagine JFK featuring Long Island wines :D:eek:

Correct. The most recent domestic F red I was served, a Hames Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, is available at my local Grocery Outlet for $6.99. I suspect Delta’s wholesale price is closer to $4-5, given typical retail grocery markups.

Chateau Ste Michelle *does* make an appearance frequently on international J wine lists, and it seems Delta’s budget for those is roughly double the domestic cost at around $10 or so per bottle. A few years back, it was closer to $15, but that hasn’t been true since roughly 2018 when a noticeable quality drop occurred.

My experience as far as wine list accuracy doesn’t really match OP’s. I do see old bottles from the previous rotation briefly around the first week or two of a new cycle, but other than that the wines are very consistent. I wonder if certain stations are more likely to miscater; OP, if you can post which airport catered the flight and which wines appeared instead the next time this happens to you, it would be interesting data to get to the bottom of what might be happening here.

Can we please just get something different from a boring Chardonnay on domestic (and even intl)? It’s so basic (no pun intended, lol).

Like a dry rosé . . . .

That could be OK if the wines were picked carefully. I've had some nice Chardonnays from Long Island. Hargrave (spelling?) with the lattice on the label is one that's been around for a long time, but it's probably beyond DL's price point. However, I suspect that some NYC folks would be upset.

The best bottle of wine I encountered in 2019 was a 2 liter bottle of "Budget Rotwein" I bought at the Spar supermarket in the Graz Hauptbahnhof in Austria. The trick with this stuff is to take the plastic cap off and let it breathe for 30 minutes or so, and then it tastes at least as good as anything Andrea Robinson procures for the Big D.

The price: €1.49

I've thought that the "Princess of Plonk" has been a big joke for a long time.

I could pick better wines and varieties than Andrea....she’s a one trick pony....basic Chardonnay for everyone.

Just like Michelle Bernstein with her Lean Cuisine DL One Entrees.

There has been a decent sized wine industry in southwestern Michigan (Paw Paw is about 150 miles west of DTW on the I-94, and the vineyards continue on until almost to New Buffalo the Indiana line) which has been around for decades, probably to serve the Chicago market. I think of wineries like St. Julien and Tabor Hill.

Kenwood would be a vast improvement on any wines that DL serves.

Once upon a time, pre-Andrea, Delta's wines were decent. They haven't been in some time. I stick to Woodford or beer. When I go to Italy, I buy either the red wines sold in milk carton packaging in Co-op or Carrefour Express stores that you can tet for less than 2 euros, or go with a Lambrusco from Emilia-Romagna for 3-4 euros. When I eat in a restaurant, I order the house wines, as I would only be guessing, and the people running the restaurants take pride in the food and rink they serve, so more often than not you are going to get an enjoyable wine at a fair price. My latest beer discovery in Italy has been Ichnusa, which is brewed on the island of Sardinia. Their 66 cl bottle of "unfiltrata" is one of the most refreshing beers I've ever drank, and is only about 2.25 Euros. Good stuff.

Sutter Home White Zinfandel would be better than what they serve now.

I'll have to respectfully disagree about Andrea Robinson's wine selecting ability, I feel Delta significantly improved international business class wine selections on her arrival a few years back. Her selections have always been tilted towards Spain and South America because that's where the value for dollars spent was. Doesn't not hurt that I have extensively traveled both regions and immensely enjoyed their wines.

That said, sometime last year, it looks like Delta cut the per bottle wine budget in Delta One. It started on the flight where her comment on one wine selection was "Great value for the price." Andrea's picks are still good, but if price ceiling is too low, that is not her fault.

Well, when the budget gets cut too far, most self-respecting somms give up on the gig, not on the wine. Source: I'm a somm (though not a master like AR).

By comparison, on a recent Air France flight (purchased through Delta), one of the red wines offered was a 2016 Chateauneuf du Pape, one of the best vintages in recent memory for that appellation. It was excellent.

Air France business class offers outstanding wine selections, totally agree. My experience with AF, however, is the FAs are not as apt to come back around for refills as, say, Delta or Alitalia.

Alitalia really is my favorite business class product to fly because of the consistently good food and wine offerings. I've always had great service as well.

On AF, I've noticed that the flight crew works really hard for about 90 minutes at dinner time, and then slinks away from view until breakfast service. They also don't seem to load unlimited amount of adult beverages like Delta does, perhaps as a means of limiting alcohol consumption to reduce the chances of in-flight altercations (I guess they expect business class to act like soccer crowds). They do have this small buffet counter at the back of the J cabin, but it seems to only have a bottle of scotch and some soft drinks, and not much else.

This matches my experience as well. There have been some real Andrea Robinson picked winners over the years; the problem is that Delta cut the budget recently. I don’t actually hate the choices she’s making now, either, but there’s a lot less flexibility in the current price point to make interesting acquisitions like second wines from high end wineries.

I also don’t think the stylistic choices are entirely her fault - I suspect there’s almost always a Chardonnay on the menu because a big portion of the clientele demands it. I think they often are interesting interpretations of the grape that avoid BIG CALIFORNIA OAK, though, throwing the rest of us a bone who prefer a bit more subtlety and showing some skill on the part of the sommelier.

The domestic wines aren’t her fault - those are just private labels that allow large California producers to dump their excess production cheaply. They can occasionally be okay - the existence of the Gross-Out Wine blog confirms that! - but I don’t think there’s much intentionality to how Delta acquires it.

I always ask to see the bottle so I can take a picture of the label and record it in my Vivino app to remember what I’ve tried. Even the surliest flight attendants are willing to accommodate this, usually, and it’s a convenient reason that isn’t “I suspect you’re serving me the cheap stuff”. It also makes it really easy to challenge the ground Prosecco (oh, I really wanted to try the champagne that was on the wine list instead, do you have a bottle on board?)

I agree with the second statement - my French pronunciation isn’t great, and many flight attendants’ wine varietal knowledge isn’t great, especially when blending is involved. “The French white wine” or “the Italian red wine” is almost always a successful order.

Will have to look and consider giving it a try. Any recommendations on other reds from the TX Section at HEB? :)

I admit to not being overly picky with my wines. But I find Chateau St Michelle more than acceptable, though still give a slight edge to 14 Hands.

I wasn't encouraging this across the network (or discouraging it either). But given DL's marketing in WA, and even using Seattle/Washington branded products in some ways (such as some of the snacks they serve at the SEA SkyClub), I would think DL could look to market itself in the SEA area by serving Washington-based wines, at least at the SEA SkyClub, but I would be quite happy with 14 Hands being served as the wines of choice across the network, or at least for the red wine selection (Cabernet or Merlot).

And wines from RDU/North Carolina would be fine. I've had many good wines from NC as a lot of the old tobacco farms have converted over to wineries.

This...1000x this

My second airline of choice is JetBlue and if they (who are generally regarded as a budget airline) can offer a drinkable rose for sale in coach in the summer it doesn’t seem crazy to think that maybe Delta could offer at least regionally/seasonally

Always be careful when ordering Cotes du Rhone that you don't get served Coke Zero.

Let’s aim a little higher here than 14 Hands. Alaska serves Browne Family Winery now onboard, which is dramatically higher quality - I believe it was a mutually beneficial partnership to bring national attention to a new boutique producer trying to distribute more broadly.

14 Hands is borderline acceptable, I guess, but I don’t think it’s dramatically better than the wine we already get at its $8 price point. Honesty, unless Delta is willing to spend closer to $10, Washington isn’t going to be an option - we just don’t have as many vineyards with excess production that needs dumping like California, South America or Europe do.

On the plus side, 14 Hands comes in cans, which could be logistically useful for Delta.

(My perspective is likely colored here by being a Washington local, where we have many much better options both at and above the 14 Hands price point that likely don’t see distribution outside the state.)

The wife and I are members at Pedernales, so we obviously like them. What they sell at HEB is usually labeled as Texas Tempranillo and is a blend of the bottoms of the barrels of several of their single vineyard Temps. If you ever want their good stuff, we go up once a quarter or so to pick up our wine club allotment and would be happy to take y’all with us. Becker is just down the road from them and does free tastings for military. We also like Lewis quite a bit and have found them in restaurants around SAT but not in HEB that I can remember.