Chardonnay and an Emergency in the Sky

It loves skies, and it loves to fly, and the sight of a sole Bateleur eagle soaring in an open pale-blue sky inspired Danie de Wet to name his icon De Wetshof Chardonnay after this majestic raptor. Thus, the Bateleur Chardonnay was born in 1991.

My love for the Bateleur, as well as many other Chardonnays, also has a relationship with flying and the open skies, although not as calm as an eagle gliding through the air with graceful, careless ease.

Back in 1986, an airplane trip to America meant an enforced detour via Europe. South Africa was well and truly in the throes of apartheid and therefore being sanctioned, with the Americans disallowing direct commercial flights from South Africa to the Land of the Free. For South Africans, this meant jetting to Europe and from there connecting to the States. A long haul in those days when airline passenger services were more tedious than today.

My parents were living in Washington DC then, and thought a Christmas visit from their Stellenbosch-based student son was called for. Of course, I jumped at the chance and in the second week of December 1986 I began the long-haul: Cape Town to Johannesburg. Johannesburg to Frankfurt. Frankfurt-New York. Then onto DC.

Getting-off at Frankfurt, hazy-eyed after a night of on-plane beer-drinking with two wannabe actresses from East-London setting off to seek fame and fortune in LA, I stumbled to the TWA departure zone, ready for the nine-or-so hour flight to the Big Apple. One pick-me-up Bloody Mary, and we boarded, the adrenaline beginning to flow through my veins along with the vodka and tomato juice: Now, for the first time, I was really getting pumped-up about the prospect of seeing America for the first time.

The interior of the TWA Jumbo smelled of burnt coffee and looked a bit worn, but the air-hostesses were sunny and blonde with brilliant smiles. Had my first American beer – Miller High-Life – just after take-off, and settled down as myself and 300-or-so passengers headed west. The whole aisle-row next to me was open, but I was too excited to sleep.

Now, all of us who have flown have heard the pilot’s voice coming across the speakers announcing a bit of rough air, a possible bumpiness, a calm request to take your seats and fasten seat-belts. And this flight was no different. About five hours in, after a lunch of hash-browns, sausage, gravy and a surprisingly bright and perky tomato salad, the Captain called. “Return so seats”, “belts fastened”…the obligatory signs to buckle-up lit-up.

Thing is, the plane continued flying smooth and straight, and no bumps or shakes from unexpected air-pockets.

I just got the sense that something was not right. The purser walked down the aisles with a sombre face, motioning the stewardesses to the back of the plane. One stewardess bent over an older passenger to tighten the lady’s seat-belt and tapped her on the forearm, some sort of reassurance, the reason for which made me wonder.

After a while the crew returned to the cabin, making their way to the open seats. A TWA stewardess took an one in the row next to me. I wanted to ask, but when I saw her trying to hide the fact that she was crying, I refrained.

The Captain’s voice over the speaker, a broad Midwest drawl. The plane was going to make an unexpected landing in an hour or so. Keep calm. You’ll be updated.

First thought, of course, was a hijack. How much longer before the Arabic-accented voice boomed through the cabin informing us that we infidels were heading to Bagdad or Islamabad?

I had enrolled to study journalism the next year, so was sitting with a story before I even knew how to write it.

The mood among the passengers was, strangely, calm. And I don’t know what is more foreboding: a communal unknowing silence or mass hysteria. Minutes crawled by like slugs on Valium. I just stared out the window, and all I could see was cloud.

The Captain spoke. Due to an unforeseen incident, the plane was having to land at Goose Bay. Canada. And that was all. I knew that this was north, very north. From Europe, the shortest distance to America is to not fly in a straight line, but in a northerly, latitude-broaching curve. So, any place between Frankfurt and New York was going to be north from our destination. Hopefully, not somewhere in the Atlantic.

Then the descent began. Quick and steep. And the Captain told us this was the emergency landing we had, on boarding the plane, been briefed about as a possible occurrence, and that “it is happening now”.

And there it was. A lot of engine noise. A few cries and yelps from passengers and crew. We dropped. Oxygen masks fell from the space above our seats, bobbing on their cords as we set them on our faces. It smelt clean and pure, and fresh. I took a few deep breaths of oxygen in the hope of finding some inner calm.

I mean, what does an emergency landing entail? Slamming into an arctic forest and bursting into flames? Plunging into the icy ocean? Or having the plane skate over a desolate winter wilderness before, eventually, coming to a halt. Us traumatised survivors wondering if we’d ever be found – and how long it would be before we were forced to make steak tartare from each other’s shoulder-flesh.

But it all happened very quickly. Oxygen-mask on, I took one last peak out of the window and saw we were in the middle of dense white clouds. Then there was blue sky, and we were ordered to take the brace position, heads on knees, hand behind necks. I heard myself breathing into the mask, and it sounded like gasps.

The engines roared, like really roared, before we hit the runway. Wheels bounced a few times, and then there was this metallic screech as the brakes were slammed on, full-tilt. The plane was on the ground now, but still thundering ahead, on and on, my face on my Levi’s, hearing the brakes on wheels, the engine wailing.  And then it stopped.

The hostess next to me threw her mask aside, jumped up and joined her colleagues in opening the emergency doors. Tossed the doors outside, onto the snow. The yellow chutes dropped from the plane, falling slowly on the snow-decked runway, and row-by-row we were ordered to get up from the seats and then, one-by-one, we slid down the chutes like kids at a playground into the icy chill of Arctic air.

We stood in circles, watching the others descend, catching them as they reached the ground. The plane was quiet now, its red tail vivid, real against that what was all around us, namely unreal blue sky and endless unfathomable fields of snow, pure and very white.

Military ambulances and fire-trucks had lined-up next to the runway and uniformed men stood and walked and talked, and looked at the plane. A guy next to me from Dakota said Goose Bay is a Canadian military base, and if there was one area you’d want to make an emergency landing, an air-force centre was it.

The TWA air-crew, pilots and stewardesses, were the last to slide down. I saw a man and a few lady passengers being helped to an ambulance. The rest of us were gathering our senses, trying to take it all in, talking as tufts of warm air from our mouths were clouded by the ice-cold air.

I had always wanted to see Canada, although this first experience was not how I expected it to be.

Medical personnel came around, asking us if bodies were in any way harmed. Then some trucks stopped and here I was, three years after my military service once again riding in the back of an olive-green army lorry.

Us 300-or-so passengers were taken to a mighty huge air-force hangar where coffee and bread rolls and slices of dense dark cake had been laid out on long trestle-tables, but few were thinking about food, yet. At that time, reality still had to sink in. What the fuck had just happened?

An airman in a green Canadian military overall handed me a mug of black coffee. “Welcome to Goose Bay,” he said, “you guys sure picked a bum place to stop.”

From there we were driven to some kind of military base, and I looked out of the truck. Snow and military vehicles; jet-fighters in hangars; troops marching through the snow; guard-towers and anti-aircraft guns aimed at the sky. And snow, all that snow. Everywhere.

In the mess-hall I saw a map. Found Goose Bay, some 2 400km north-east of New York. Latitude 53.3N. Greenland lying just north across the sea.

A military voice asked us to sit-down in the mess-hall, and I saw a tall, lean guy in camouflage fatigues and sparkling insignia on his epaulettes. He told us burning material had been detected in the TWA plane while we were flying over the ocean, the cause of this unplanned landing up here in Newfoundland-Labrador Canada. We were to stay at the base and await further instructions, but TWA was sending a plane from New York to collect us, and this should arrive during the night, and we’d leave at daybreak.

In the meantime, “make yourselves at home”.

I found a pool-room and played some racks with three trainee pilots from British Columbia. Some other passengers joined in, our civilian clothing mingling with the olive-green jump-suits and crew-cuts of the air-force guys. There were girls among us, and the recruits strutted before them, throwing low-browed glances.

After a supper of chicken and mash potato and some salads, I headed to the bar with some fellow passengers from Australia. We didn’t discuss the flight. We didn’t mention the fire onboard. No-one talked of being lucky.

’80s pop-music was playing in the officers’ bar, I think I heard Spandau Ballet and Depeche Mode. The officers stood-up and welcomed us, and told us to order drinks, it’s all on them.

The Australians asked for beer and were given perspiring bottles of Molson. I took a long shot and requested some white wine. Wine is sun, it is warmth and it is comfort. This, I needed.

A bottle, half-full, was put on the bar-top alongside a surprisingly fancy-looking glass. I read the label, and saw Paul Masson, and the other word was “Chardonnay”. It was from California, this wine.

This was 1986, Chardonnay had barely arrived in South Africa. And here I was, sub-arctic, getting a glass of it in an air-force bar in northern Canada. I poured the glass half-full, and the pale gold colour made me let out a sigh. The colour in the glass was like a sun, rising on a new day of more life. At the first mouthful I didn’t want it to stop. Sweet and buttery, lying full and dense, almost oily in its heaviness, the weight of which I had never experienced in any white wine before.

So, this is Chardonnay, I thought. And knew that this was going to be a long, lasting love-affair.

And tomorrow, I was going home.

• A brief report of the incident was reported in the American media here.