Bottle Shock

I recently order wine that was traveled 3000 miles ground shipping. They were some older bottles of cab (98 and 99). A friend who has bought wine via auction has said to wait a few months from consuming due to the wine being “shaken”. Any thoughts on this?

You’ll get a million different opinions. I think most people refer to it as ‘travel shock,’ with bottle shock occurring when the wine is first bottled. I’m a believer in the latter, but travel shock is unfounded in my experience. It might disturb the sediment but that’s it.

If wine gets ‘shocked’ from movement, why do people insist on swirling the heck out of the wine in their glasses? Or decant it?

Not sure I believe in travel shock either, especially in older wines. But I would say that the sediment is likely very stirred up. Leaving the bottles alone for a week would probably alleviate that plus the standard advice of standing it upright the day before if you can.

This is great! First thread on this subject that I have ever seen where the first two responses get it right. Travel shock is an urban myth of sorts. No denying that shaken sediment can have a negative impact on your enjoyment of the wine, so if that is at issue, usually better to lay the wine down for a bit to let the sediment precipitate out. Of course, there will NEVER be any agreement as to how long! I have checked old wines in the so-called Wine Cruzer foam-padded carrier, stood them up after unpacking them and then drunk them the next night, and had the wines show brilliantly. At one NY tasting, a friend from LA did the same thing, and his wines were excellent as well. Wine critics often fetish and obsess about travel shock, but I believe that is just part of their schtick, and in reality, accomplishes no more than “better safe than sorry”. If points are being assigned and tasting notes published, I suppose that we, the reading public, are best served by the critic laying the wines down for six months. However, except in the sediment case above, I do not believe for a minute that any critic could discern the difference between the next-day wine and the six-month wine…

I agree, Bill, and often wonder if the anecdotal ‘evidence’ people quote is just an excuse for an off bottle, or even borderline corked bottle. The wine doesn’t show well, people blame the travel, and say it didn’t perform as well as the bottle they had some time back. To me, that’s just bottle variation, selectively attributed to travel shock. No one gives a recently shipped bottle credit for showing well when they do, just when they show poorly. Not scientific in the least.

If travel shock is true, then wouldn’t something like 90% of all wine consumed in the US not be ready to drink? (Isn’t most wine purchased and consumed a few hours later?)

Count me among those who have never experienced travel shock and are highly dubious that such a phenomenon exists. I take wine on the plane with me almost every time I travel and have never had a problem.

Not only should you pop them right away, but make sure you give them the Mollydooker shake to get the sediment distributed evenly through the wine

Holy crap, I’ve heard about it, but never seen that clip before. Sparky should be selling ShamWow!! What a load of horse$hit.

The Mollydooker Shake is one of the great double entendre of all time.

No kidding. Yet again someone spreading the myth of nitrate allergies being common. Its in the damn grapes!!! The cynical part of me thinks this is something to sort of micro-ox that wine a bit more to give it that plush mouth feel.

Thanks to all responses. Travel shock should have been the title, but i learned about obttle shock in the meantime, so that was good. I think with my older cabs that just came, i will let them sit for a week or 2 so the sediment settles. All great posts, and certainly an interesting topic.

My opinion is that 98 and 99 cabs are not “older” cabs. At least they shouldn’t be. No idea on bottle shock.

Travel shock is absolutely a real thing, but not from domestic travel in my experience. Cross-atlantic journeys seriously screw up wine for 1-6 months though, particularly high acid wines (pinot noir and sauv blanc are hard hit)

Absolutely, it’s that crossing the time zones thing that does it. It’s worst going west to east.

A quick/sudden drop in the temp of a wine (empirically, >5 degrees drop seems to do it) can cause a wine to go into ‘shock’. Perhaps that’s the issue that Daniel McNiff wrote about?

Sorry, that makes even less sense than Daniel McNiff’s ‘cross-Atlantic’ hooey.

Eric, do you think that’s true of a bottle taken from cellar/locker, and brought to room temp? I routinely store opened bottles in the fridge, then pour a glass to warm up (have even been known to nuke a glass on occasion when I’m impatient ) I guess my experience is different, I have never noticed an issue with temperature.
Cheers,
Alan

Exactly, Alan. I have occasionally nuked a refrigerated wine to no ill effect. went from 35 to 60 in well under a minute. No problem.

Guess I’m in the minority here. Living in the Bay Area, I don’t worry much about wines I order from California producers, nor wines I buy locally and have shipped to Marin. If I order from a SoCal retailer, that’s ok too. I totally give my wines from the east coast a breather when they arrive, though on 2nd day air they also recover pretty quickly.

Now, I’m bought my fair share of wines from WTSO, and have often done the free transcontinental shipping. It takes about 8 days from Philly to Marin. Likely on a rail car. That’s a lot of vibration. I’d be pretty worked over after a week on a train, I like to think of wines as alive in the bottle and thus it might be hard on the wine too. I’ve bought any number of middle-aged 4-packs of wine, drunk over 4-6 months, where the last bottle show much better…much better than the incremental age would offer. I do the 2nd day option most of the time now, the extra $10 for the shipment is way worth it and the wines seem to come out of the funk earlier…just like I would coming off the plane vs 8 days in a rail car.

But perhaps I’m just nuts and projecting my comfort and feelings on a bottle of juice, who knows?

So I guess I could be in an expectation cause/effect spiral on this subject, but I’m a big believer, at least on cross-country shipments.