eponymous_coward

Booze purchase in Y IS a profit center for the airline. $7 for a mini? Go to your local liquor store and see what the cost of a mini is there (and keep in mind there's some taxes on that an airline won't pay). And then realize that minis are extremely light and don't take up much space (much more so than food, and even beer- and don't forget those items often require refrigeration, minis do not).

Now keep in mind that lots of people order well drinks when they are out drinking. Your typical well bourbon at a generic sports bar in the United States, the one you get when you ask for "bourbon and coke" is something like Jim Beam. Well scotch for a scotch and soda? Dewar's wouldn't surprise me. So the reality is that UA's drink selection matches what bars would serve pretty well, plus the standards lots of people ask for as call drinks: Jack Daniel's and so on.

The problem with premium/specialty booze is that if it's in a glass fifth bottle, OK, you're not saving on weight/space any more, there's storage issues, and so on. So you need a manufacturer who can give you minis. That probably means the really specialty producers are out, and the mass market ones that make minis are what you get.

In a perfect world, UA would do something like what SQ and other airlines do, and upgrade the drinks on longhaul premium C/F- my Highland Park 12 on HKG-SIN-DPS was from a bottle (and that would be a very solid single-malt to serve in longhaul C, a $50 bottle, isn't overly peat monster-y). The reality is that UA isn't SQ, but we already knew that.

andrewwm

The snobbery is strong in this post

I'll grant that the beer, wine and scotch/whisk(e)y UA serves is generally plonk to an experienced drinker. But most people aren't experienced drinkers. I doubt most UA customers have any real ability to separate out the good from the bad wines UA has, let alone prefer one brand of vodka over another.

Most high end alcohols are, as pointed out, Veblen goods and survive primarily on snob appeal. Brands and Grey Goose and Ciroc usually get trashed by critics compared to $10/bottle vodka in taste tests, yet that doesn't stop people from calling it in screwdrivers for a $5 premium. People associate having a better experience with buying a more expensive, high-end brand alcohol (feelings of being "in the know" and "smarter than the average consumer" are often self-reported after buying this type of alcohol), and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - people are primed for the experience and then their brain delivers, regardless of the quality of the alcohol. Alcohol companies have certainly figured this out.

I think UA's choice of hard alcohol is about right - mainline alcohols at a reasonable price. It doesn't allow people to feel smug in their high-minded attitudes about how superior their alcohol tastes are, but whatever. Anything that hastens the death of this mindset is a plus in my book.

Eastbay1K

The reality is that UA used to do this. The selection was varied, quality-wise, but the F cabin had JW Blue, Bombay Sapphire, a calvados of some type, etc.

FLYMSY

Irony, sweet irony.

(boldings above are mine.)

mander

Me thinks you frequent a better class of drinking establishments than I do if those are the wells you get.

Very happy to have Bombay Sapphire. One less reason to pick LH.

Eastbay1K

I would be shocked. The well booze is going to generally not have a recognizable name. There are some better places around here that have a "mid-shelf" well, but the run of the mill bar is going to have a generic-equivalent.

eponymous_coward

Yeah, but that was before WN, etc. sucked all the profit out of domestic, and UA responded by turning longhaul F into upgrade class, as a "suffer with us on domestic and we'll upgrade you on longhaul! SWUs on the house!" bribe... and then started shaving features off of F (like Dom and JW Blue) as beancounting cost savings, because revenue started getting decoupled from class of service.

The problem I see is that if UA wants to really strongly bring the quality of longhaul F forward, they have to shut down the upgrade party, which is most of the reason people are willing to put up with UA in the first place. I think it more likely they just give up on longhaul F eventually and do what DL did.

So I'm not optimistic that we'll see longhaul booze upgraded. Oh well.

Possibly. One place I go to does Evan Williams as the well bourbon, one does Jim Beam. I tend to not patronize places where the wells are crap (one of note: the AS Bored Room™ in SEA, where the wells are free and taste like paint thinner, and the calls are not free and don't).

crazeinc

I'd be willing to fork over money for premium liquor and wine sitting in C or F. Isn't this how most RCC's do it, free for the well drinks and paid for the good stuff? In a perfect world, it would be included in the cost of the ticket, but I can live with paying a little extra.

Eastbay1K

I would not be willing. They should call it "big seat" service, not First or Business Class in that case.

joshwex90

Compared to some of the recent threads in the forum, this one is a lot funnier!

Just me personally,

I had a glass of wine with my dinner a couple of nights ago in BF. I'm no wine connoisseur, but I do like wine, and have a developed a taste for some classier wines. Was this wine that? A 2010 Cabarnet Savignon from Barkan (a solid but nothing special Israeli winery)...no. But I was simply interested in a solid wine with my meal; I'm not flying CO to have the top wines offered. As a Kosher eater, I'd sooner fly LY F for that, and for non Kosher, I'd go to BA F, EK F...

There is what to be said though for having better scotch and beer (again, still me personally,) but by vodka, I just don't see the need

mecabq

I think that your first two sentences contradict one another -- instead of calling me a "snob," let's say, "experienced drinker" who prefers Chivas Regal over Johnnie Walker Red. I also disagree with your assumption that there is not a critical pass of people who travel a lot, especially internationally and/or in premium cabins, who meet at least the "experienced drinker" threshold and would value something better than UA's "plonk."

And your statement about "Veblen" goods is crazy. Anyone who is even a casual drinker (and who likes vodka) can tell the difference between Grey Goose and Popov. I would like to see your evidence that higher-end brands "usually get trashed by critics compared to $10/bottle vodka in taste tests." Obviously cost and taste/quality are not perfectly correlated, but the correlation is also not close to zero (nor is it negative, as you seem to imply).

Of course when mixing it with orange juice, especially the canned chemistry experiment that UA serves, the taste difference in vodka drinks is less, but, still, to say that, in general, higher-priced vodka brands are not any better than cheap ones is complete nonsense.

sinoflyer

My college-fraternity-level drinking experiences involved stuff like Popov's that come in big plastic jugs. The drinks were served out of plastic-lined trash cans with those red Solo cups. And if you put them under black light, I believe they would glow. Somehow I think UA isn't quite like that just yet.

A couple of years ago, when PMUA was trotting out their new BOB menu, some of us were invited for a taste testing. We were not served any of the alcoholic drinks, but I remember being asked whether or not we'd be willing to pay extra for "premium" drinks like Maker's Mark and better wines if they could get the wineries to put them in single serving bottles. Maker's did make it on board for a short while, so I presume the result they got was yes, we were willing to pay extra. But it was eventually removed, so the actual outcome in the marketplace perhaps indicated no, we are not willing to pay more. Instead, we tend to gravitate towards the middle, safer bets.

andrewwm

Maybe your experience is different than mine, but almost all the customers I see in United domestic F or Int'l C ask for just red or white wine. They couldn't be bothered to figure out the brand or if it's supposed to be good or not. And, frankly, most people are just as happy with cheap wine as expensive wine (assuming that they're not allowed to see the label!)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ap-plonk-taste

Given that most people highly overrate their own ability to taste wine and the fact that much of the appeal of wine is snob appeal (trust me, my family owns a vineyard), United would be best off buying whatever cheap obscure Burgundy or Bordeaux that they could get their hands on so United flyers would feel like they're getting "real" wine and UA could get some wine on the cheap. I don't know if you read the thread or not, but there were almost riots here when UA subbed a highly rated California sparkling wine for French champagne because UA no longer had "real" champagne a few years ago.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...e-test-446516/

$35 Hangar One ties bottom-shelf $8 "swill" in a taste test

http://moneyland.time.com/2011/03/23...s-10-a-bottle/

$10 Polish Vodka beats almost any premium vodka brand you care to name.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/dining/26wine.html

Smirnoff beats all comers in a NYTimes blind taste test.

This is all from about 5 seconds of Googling. If premium vodka isn't the definition of Veblen good, I don't know what is.

Moreover, have you ever seen anyone drink straight vodka on a UA flight? Even with just ice you can pretty much forget about being able to tell apart the trivial taste differences between most brands.

Look, I'll agree with you that I'd prefer my favorite single malt over Johnnie Red. But after you get above a certain price point (and that price point in most alcohol categories has been dropping over the years), price no longer has much relationship to quality.

http://www.remote.org/frederik/proje...sky/fazit.html

This professional whiskey tester found Bushmill's (a generic Irish whiskey) to be equivalent to some of the best single malts in a blind taste test (note that Johnny Red came in solidly in the middle of the pack - a not uncommon occurrence in blind taste tests). His conclusion, which I completely agree with:

I don't see why UA should make my ticket more expensive simply to provide high-end plonk to satisfy those who need status and snob pampering with Johnnie Blue or Grey Goose when there are plenty of competitors out there for a 1/3rd of the price that taste better. I'll grant that everyone's tastes are different, but given that UA can only buy one thing, buy something good, rather than buying expensive name brands.

BH62

Don't have the time to search this thread for comments on wine, so maybe this is redundant. Our take: Wine selection in international C, very good; wine "selection" in domestic F, close to undrinkable. YMMV.

Boraxo

Still a mediocre beer selection. Alaska has Alaskan Ale, even Southwest has Corona. And of course non-US carriers like LH have decent local brews.