My boyfriend and I were recently discussing why it is that wine on an airplane tastes so terrible. The only perk these days in many first-class cabins is a free glass of gawdawful wine. Just gawdawful. Why?

It turns out that airline food and wine taste terrible because you are consuming them on an airplane high in the sky. Apparently one’s ability to taste food and wine decreases by 30 percent at high altitude. Cabin pressure suppresses the effect of odor, so you cannot smell what you eat, either. Moreover, the recycled air dries your nose out, so even if odor molecules were as abundant at 10,000 feet as on the ground, your nose would be oblivious. Most interesting, the din of the airplane engines makes one think the food is bland. The only explanation I found for that is that the brain is distracted by the noise and can’t focus on the food (I think there must be more to it than that).

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