I read once, that our taste buds suffer on aircraft, which goes some way to explaining airline food. At least you can always add salt and pepper, but that won’t work with wine. I’ve been doing a bit of travelling lately so I’ve made an effort to try as many wines as possible (ah, the sacrifice!) to test the theory.

I’ve discovered that it’s true – airline wine doesn’t taste that great – the weird thing is, it’s got nothing to do with altitude. Wines sampled at 10 metres above sea level were equally disappointing to those found 10,000 metres higher up.

Let’s start with the worst – an unwooded chardonnay found in the Sydney Domestic Qantas lounge. It was so bad I’d rather not mention its name, suffice to say it came from a recognized WA producer and I had higher expectations. The great Australian wine maker, John Middleton of Mount Mary used to complain that most Australia chardonnays were ‘lolly water’. Drink this and you’ll see why – boiled sweets dominate. Yuk. Later I found the wine for sale at Dan Murphy’s for $10. How highly Qantas value their customers.

At the other end of the scale I came across two wines in the Qantas International Lounge which promised much. The first was a Petaluma Merlot, the second an Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir. The Merlot confirmed something that I’d recently discovered at a Merlot dinner – Australia can’t make Merlot. It wasn’t a bad wine, more a case of expectations badly managed. It had rich concentrated fruit, but tightly locked under a layer of soft tannin. Admittedly it was far too young being a 2013, but then they shouldn’t be serving it. The Pinot was pretty much the same, though with strawberry instead of dark cherries. I bet both of them cost well over $10 though, so thank you Qantas, for trying.

I did have one good chardonnay up in the air though, the Hill Smith Estate Adelaide Hills Chardonnay. James Halliday gave the 2012 a score of 95. Nick’s Wine Merchants used to have some for $25. Well rounded rich fruit, good acidity and just the right amount of wood. Perhaps vines grown at a higher altitude make better wine for high altitude?