Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by jojobas on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:32PM
(#25899163)
Have a friend hold a blind tasting for you.
Did that to a couple of headstrong wine people, they were unable to tell their favorite (chardonnay for one and shiraz for another) from a bunch of AUD7 bottles.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by al3xandre on Monday January 25, 2021 @01:18AM
(#25899938)
There can be such a wide range of different wines within « chardonnay » and « Shiraz » that saying one of the two is you « favorite wine » is meaningless. Hence the outcome of this blind testing.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by rblatz on Monday January 25, 2021 @12:02AM
(#25899440)
My wife and I accidentally did an experiment the other day. Grabbed a random bottle we got as a gift to drink with our pizza. It was a cab sauv which is a wine we usually don’t care for. We both were surprised at how much we did like it and how smooth it was. The next day we were shopping at target and saw it was an $85 bottle of wine.
Not sure if we could have told it from a $40 bottle, but it certainly stood head and shoulders above the $20 bottles we typically buy.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by jojobas on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:44PM
(#25899274)
>...the objective evaluation of large numbers of wines as currently attempted at wine competitions is, he asserts, "beyond human ability".
Wine experts also can't tell if they're tasting 3 glasses from the same bottle.
I don't mean to say you can't stuff up a batch of wine, but basically everything that made it to the store in the current state of quality control is good enough to not be told apart by anyone.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by peteretep on Monday January 25, 2021 @12:36AM
(#25899674)
> Wine experts also can't tell if they're tasting 3 glasses from the same bottle.
No. It is possible to select three different wines that even people with excellent palettes can't really differentiate between, and it is possible with some suggestion to make people believe the same wine is different wines. It is also true that some wine "experts" have terrible palettes.
That is not the same piece of information as "wine experts also can't tell if they're tasting 3 glasses from the same bottle".
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by cbhl on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:27PM
(#25899119)
This looks comparable to other monthly wine subscriptions. For example, Bright Cellars' subscription was $80+S+H+tax for 4 bottles a month, with regular upsell emails for a 6-pack or 12-pack or a box of cheese.
I have received far more emails from them since covid though with "special deals" that don't seem that fantastic.
Interestingly, I've also seen airline food kitchens starting to do home-delivery: https://www.gategourmetmeals.com.au/meals
--> they sell packs of e.g. 4 microwave meals for ~$15.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by prepend on Sunday January 24, 2021 @09:49PM
(#25898491)
This seems like The Onion. Airplane wine has always been pretty terrible to me and only purchased due to being stuck in a plane with nowhere else to go.
Not sure how this will make more than just liquidating and eating the loss.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by ampdepolymerase on Sunday January 24, 2021 @10:41PM
(#25898794)
There are physiological reasons for poorer tasting food and beverages in-flight. Even if the wine is good, the changes in air pressure and environment can affect the taste, a lot.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by o3099239 on Monday January 25, 2021 @03:16AM
(#25900718)
SQ Suites is definitely one of the best soft products in the sky. Dom and Krug aside, they even go over the top for coffee. First time I’ve had Jamaican Blue Mountain served in flight.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by patentatt on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:15PM
(#25899026)
Well if you’re the guy buying and managing wine for AA, maybe you have some extra time on your hands and some extra pallets of wine given the circumstances. So rather than be axed by management, why not propose a wacky wine club promo? This article alone could have saved a couple of people their jobs. And honestly, rightly so. $50k is not a lot in the grand scheme of things for an airline, but it just may patch a hole in the budget of ‘wine division’ of the AA catering subsidiary, or something to that effect. I’m sure it’s a modest coup for someone. I doubt it was dreamt up by the CEO and discussed at board meetings as a way to save the company or anything.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by Blackthorn on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:46PM
(#25899290)
So, so much this. When it comes to how companies make money, people focus on the forest and can miss out on how each individual tree is a part of it. Will one missed tree damage the company? Probably not. But it's still a sum of all of them, and those individual trees are probably supporting a few people.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by ledauphin on Sunday January 24, 2021 @09:57PM
(#25898527)
one wonders whether it's literally about the marketing placement that this article gives them. I'm not in marketing, but I somehow wouldn't be surprised if this was worth more than $50,000 in "free" marketing.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by fortran77 on Sunday January 24, 2021 @10:41PM
(#25898792)
United sent me (a Global Services level customer) a case of wine last month as a "token of their appreciation". Now I know why! They're just purging inventory.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by ben1040 on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:48PM
(#25899317)
Buying airline wine reminds me of how hotel chains have product catalogs; you could buy the Westin "Heavenly Bed" mattress or their branded soap/shampoo.
I used to be on an 80% travel job for work and that stuff would've been the last thing I wanted for home.
Re:American Airlines has so much extra wine that it is start...
by brewdad on Monday January 25, 2021 @12:41AM
(#25899704)
An argument could be made that if you are traveling that much, the hotel mattress becomes the one you get used to and your mattress at home becomes the odd one. Why not have the same one in both cases?
People who want some pretty decent reasonable wines at a 30% discount?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting
I could believe that there is a tenuous link between price and quality, but that's not the same as saying there is no good wine.
Did that to a couple of headstrong wine people, they were unable to tell their favorite (chardonnay for one and shiraz for another) from a bunch of AUD7 bottles.
Not sure if we could have told it from a $40 bottle, but it certainly stood head and shoulders above the $20 bottles we typically buy.
Does that mean that there is no insecure and secure chat softwares?
To leverage your example, it would be like selling “secure e2e chat” (label) at a high price, although it uses insecure tech.
Wine experts also can't tell if they're tasting 3 glasses from the same bottle.
I don't mean to say you can't stuff up a batch of wine, but basically everything that made it to the store in the current state of quality control is good enough to not be told apart by anyone.
No. It is possible to select three different wines that even people with excellent palettes can't really differentiate between, and it is possible with some suggestion to make people believe the same wine is different wines. It is also true that some wine "experts" have terrible palettes.
That is not the same piece of information as "wine experts also can't tell if they're tasting 3 glasses from the same bottle".
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-wine-econ...
They literally fed the same judges the same wine in multiple glasses and got different scores.
It looks like American Airlines has had a partnership with Vinesse dating back to at least 2017: https://thepointsguy.com/2017/11/review-vinesse-wine-club-wo....
It looks like what's new is that they've slapped the Flagship brand on it, and given it a nice story to go with it.
I have received far more emails from them since covid though with "special deals" that don't seem that fantastic.
Interestingly, I've also seen airline food kitchens starting to do home-delivery: https://www.gategourmetmeals.com.au/meals --> they sell packs of e.g. 4 microwave meals for ~$15.
Not sure how this will make more than just liquidating and eating the loss.
If you're having to pay for the wine, you're not flying in the cabin where they have the good wines.
Yes, I know the article says they "want to engage with customers", but that's hardly enough money to make that worthwhile.
https://simpleflying.com/lufthansa-costs-500-000-per-hour/
I used to be on an 80% travel job for work and that stuff would've been the last thing I wanted for home.