Photo by Laurie Proffitt
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Catch a Flight to Cabernet
No reservations needed, pleasant flight guaranteed. By Nancy Ross Ryan
Riddle: What's the difference between a wine tasting and a wine flight? Answer: No spitting allowed. And you can have fun with a flight. A wine tasting is rarely, if ever, fun. It's a serious event, a series of small tastings of related wines. You're supposed to pay attention and make notes. All you get to eat is bread. And, worst of all, you should really spit out the wines -- among them some of the best you've ever tasted -- into a bucket. I have learned a great deal from wine tastings, but I could hardly call them fun.
Now, wine flights are delightful experiences. You get to swallow the wine. You don't have to make notes (except mental notes, if you wish). You get to order and eat lots of nice food, and you can have a good time with your friends. Wine flights are the latest way trendsetting restaurants have devised to teach us about and get us to drink a larger variety of wines. Flights aren't hard to find - you'll find flights listed on the menus of more and more restaurants, bistros especially. For example, Starfire Wine Bar & Grill in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, offers 19 different wine flights priced from $5.75 to $16.50.
Flights are a series of three or four 2-oz. glasses of related wines listed together on the menu for a set price and served all at once. The binding factor can be color or style of wine (red, white, rose, sparkling), the grape varietal (cabernets, chardonnays, merlots, syrahs), geography (wines from France, Italy, Spain, etc., or regions such as Washington State, Napa Valley, Tuscany). Wine flights can even be categorized as best buys. And flights can include more than wines. fortified wines, spirits, sakes and beers.
For wine flights to become a trend, first another trend had to become mainstream: wines by the glass. Until the 1970s in America, wines in restaurants were listed and ordered by the bottle. By-the-glass wines were a rarity. Then, according to Frank J. Prial writing in The New York Times(October 7, 1998) the Cruvinet, which made its appearance in the '70s, made it possible to offer wines by the glass while preserving the rest of the wine in the bottle. (Once a bottle of wine is opened, oxygen hastens its deterioration. The Cruvinet displaced oxygen by pumping nitrogen into the bottle and keeping the bottle stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled cabinet.) Needless to say the Cruvinet was an expensive investment, and, says Prial, popular wines went fast anyway, and unpopular wines lasted for days.
Thus wines by the glass, sans Cruvinet, became a widespread phenomenon. The next challenge for the restaurauteur was to encourage restaurant-goers to stop ordering the same wine by the glass and order a glass of something different. "The flight of wines removes one obstacle, that of price," says Ettienne Leibman, proprietor of Leibman's Wine and Fine Foods, a 20-year-old Houston firm. Leibman is also a member of the prestigious Knights of the Vine wine society. "A couple or an individual might well think twice about spending $90 or even $50 for a bottle of wine that they are unsure they will like. But it's much easier to take a chance on that wine if it is one of the glasses in a flight that costs much less."
Leibman points out that, in addition to offering the chance to experiment with different wines, ordering flights of wine at a restaurant also affords the public an experience few can have at home. "Very few people can afford to have cellars these days, and flights are a way for restaurants to showcase theirs," she says. And savvy restaurants will suggest or pair food with the wine flights.
Some flights are served on a tray, and some come in their own special carriers, such as the signature holder of the Hudson Club, Chicago, and the carrier at the Starfire that is custom made by a local ironworker. The carriers create their own kind of theater, says Randy Bednar, co-proprietor of Starfire.
But what, we asked Leibman, if you walk into a restaurant and they don't offer flights of wines on their menu - can you ask for one? "It all depends on two things: having a good selection of wines by the glass and having a good sommelier or wine manager," she says. "You can't expect a small restaurant or Suzie Q or John Doe waiter to whip up a flight for you. That's like going into a steak house, looking at the menu, and deciding you want Chilean Sea Bass. The kitchen might be able to saute you the fish du jour, maybe salmon, but don't expect the impossible."
The bottom line, says Leibman, is to find restaurants that offer flights and have fun with them. "What fun to have a variety of wines, to sample vintages, to sample varietals! I think the public is ready for it."
I'll drink to that. And there's no reason you can't recreate for friends at home the same kind of flights you have especially enjoyed in a restaurant. The flight menu is your guide to purchasing three, at the most four, bottles of wine. |
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I Trulli's Enoteca, New York City
SUPER TUSCANS, $36
O Padeiro, New York City
PORTUGUESE REDS, $12
Hudson Club, Chicago
Meson Sabika, Northfield, Illinois
Trocadero, Chicago (closed)
SYRAH BLENDS, $6.25
CHARDONNAY, $5.75
Starfire Wine Bar & Grill, Hilton Head Island, S.C.
RARE AND RESERVE REDS, $16.50
Cafe Matou, Chicago
Mistral Ristorante, Santa Rosa, California
ZINFANDEL, $9
SANGIOVESE, $7.75
MICROBREW BEERS, $4.00 |
LIQUID ASSETS - May 1999