Booze At Airports

1 of 2 NEXT

The good news in business travel? It's easier than ever to drown your sorrows at the airport with a nice glass of wine, an artisan beer, or a good cocktail.

After decades of running dreary, depressing bars of last resort, airports around the world are suddenly bursting with charming and well-stocked wine bars. Dozens of airports have convivial branches of local brewpubs that serve up some of the nation's best and most inventive brews. Airports have even become testing grounds for new dining and drinking concepts, many of them branded with prestigious names in the liquor world. And since travelers seem willing to pay for better booze and more elegant surroundings, airport bars that have gone upscale are able to charge higher prices for booze and pub grub than ever before.  

There may not be a specific moment when airport drinking began to change from nowhere-else-to-go, time-killing diversion to an entertaining and edifying experience, but we have a pretty good idea where the trend started. A decade ago, a place called the Cibo Bistro and Wine Bar opened at Philadelphia International Airport. Suddenly, drinking at the airport didn't seem so depressing.

"Why not have a great glass of wine at the airport? There's no reason why you can't," says Rick Blatstein, the ebullient chief executive of OTG Management, the company behind Cibo. "Travelers know what they want. But food-service operators at airports were used to treating their customers like prisoners."

Cibo (the Italian word for "food") is the very model of a modern airport drinking establishment. There are 32 wines available by the glass; the atmosphere and menu cheerily mimic that of a genuine Italian enoteca. Prices range from $6 to $25 a glass; Blatstein says the average pour costs $10 to $12. Eighty percent of the customers order food too.

There are now two Cibo wine bars in Philadelphia and branches at New York's LaGuardia Airport and Washington's Reagan National Airport. (Blatstein also uses the Cibo moniker for an airport-specific chain of upscale take-away markets.) OTG, which has food and beverage operations at eight U.S. airports, is readying new dining and drinking concepts for the JetBlue Airways terminal that is due to open in September at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

Cibo's success helped lay the groundwork for Vino Volo, which opened its eighth location last week at Detroit's Metro Airport. Vino Volo (roughly translated as "wine flight" in Italian) has been wowing travelers since its first branch opened at Washington's Dulles Airport in 2005. It serves wine by the glass and small plates of food that pair nicely with the wine, and even sells bottles at retail.

1 of 2 NEXT