JetBlue's Up, Up And Rosé Flight Celebrates Summer With Free Wine And Cheese

Flying can be stressful. But on June 21, to celebrate the first day of summer, passengers on JetBlue's flight 2267 from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, will be gifted a little something that might ease the frenzy of flight. Fliers (of legal drinking age, of course) will be served a complimentary glass of Famille Chavin Duc de France Rosé d'Oc 2016, JetBlue's inflight rosé offering. To pair with the wine, passengers will also receive a free snack box featuring dried cherries, crackers, and a trio of premium cheeses. And there may be other goodies and giveaways as well.

Don't know anything about rosé? JetBlue's wine expert Jon Bonné will be on board to guide the tasting, and will discuss the basics of the wine as the miles cruise by.

"Rosé is obviously the perfect summer wine," Bonné said in a telephone interview. "It's fresh, it's fruity, and it's not too tannic; it goes well with most of the food on any menu."

The tasty, trendy wine is just right for the season, and makes for a refreshing change from ho-hum airline wine offerings, Bonné said. And it was chosen with the hassles of travel in mind.

"The way you drink wine on board is different from the way you drink on the ground," he said "People get stressed out while flying, they don't want a super-serious wine." If you've never had rosé before, the specific wine chosen for the flight offers a nice introduction to the style. "It's good, it's fruity, it's everything you would want in a rosé," he says.

JetBlue, with Bonné's help, has been a pioneer in improving the inflight wine choices and experience for passengers and, in 2015, became the first domestic U.S. airline to offer rosé. The choice originally was limited to its premium Mint service, but the free offering on the special flight will be available throughout the plane. And Bonné says rosé will be available in Core, its main cabin seating, as long as inventory is available this summer.

Bonné is the author of The New California Wine and most recently, The New Wine Rules: A Genuinely Helpful Guide to Everything You Need to Know. He'll share some of the new book's useful tips with fliers, including his favorite, "drink the rainbow," by which he means to encourage drinkers to experiment with their wine options.

He thinks the free rosé and cheese flight will be appreciated by passengers — at press time, there were a few tickets left, if that date and destination fit your travel plans.

"We've found that when we do something a little out of the box (with in-flight wine offerings), people like it," he said. "Wine should always be fun." And while most of us can't take this particular flight, you need no excuse to drink a glass of wine every day, especially rosé.