I was talking to a winemaker recently who told me that she thought travel shock was a myth. After chatting, I mentioned 2 things.
How does a bottle differentiate between say, a ground trip across country and a ground trip from retailer to my house?
Granted in #1 the cross country trip involves more jostling. But, if jostling were detrimental, then why do we decant & double decant?
Debunked or not?
In my experience (having shuttled plenty of bottles across the country/pond/etc.), travel shock is consistent with wine in general - it’s a living thing. Let’s use people (i.e. other living things) as an example: sometimes they make cross-country trips with no problems, same for int’l travel, sometimes they don’t fare so well. Same for wine. Most times, no problem, other times, no bueno. If you don’t believe me, just ask Pobega 
How does a roast differentiate between say, spending 3 hours in a 300 degree oven and spending 3 days in a 300 degree oven?
If heat were detrimental why do we sear steaks?
It really depends on your frame of reference. If the wine maker you spoke with only has experience with the recent vintages that he and his competitors/neighbors make, then yes, it would be easy to draw that conclusion.
For those who have much experience with back vintages, travel shock is without a doubt an issue. Just transporting a mature bottle of Barolo from the house to a restaurant can be a problem - that fine sediment gets stirred-up and the wine is absolutely going to show differently than if the bottle was stood up a week before and gently double-decanted earlier in the day to remove sediment.
We had a long and spirited thread about this not long ago.
I am entirely convinced that it is not real as far as wines being shipped to you from a retailer or winery by common courier, or as far as wines you take with you on the plane or in the car when you travel. I am also suspicious that those “let your wines rest on their side in the dark at 55 degrees with 70% humidity for several months after you receive them” cards you get from some wineries are CYA and an attempt to make the customer feel less likely to complain or to ask for a refund on wines they don’t like.
However:
(1) Old wines with sediment may have that stirred up by jostling. I don’t think that is what is meant by “travel shock,” but others may use that expression differently to include stirring up sediment.
(2) It is possible a wine could be damaged in transit by prolonged and extreme heat or cold. I also don’t think that is what is meant by “travel shock,” but again, others may define the expression differently.
(3) Oliver McCrum was quite insistent in the thread linked above that the long process of wine going from where it was made overseas to ending up in the US, between trucks, ships, the various temperature and other conditions along the way, etc. do lead to “travel shock” when the wines get here, and cause importers/retailers to let wines sit awhile before putting them on the shelves. I have no way to know if that is true, so I don’t express an opinion about it.
Wine is NOT a living thing. It is a semi-perishable liquid. And the rest of your example, based on a flawed premise, makes no sense.
Wouldnt this be easy to check?
I mean, buy 4-6 bottles of various type and ages and store 1/2 in the cellar for 3-4 months, and store the other half in the cellar except vigorously shake them a few times a week.
This is one crazy ass answer! Like something Paul Krugman would write. Set up an insane straw man and then refute it. Crazy dude!
I didn’t like the “roast” analogy either. 
And our discussion was not meant to be about older wines that have accumulated sediment.
It’s funny though: The same winemaker told me they thought it was a myth, but then added, if the wines are not good, then of course it’s very real.
Or keep three on a cooler in your car so it’s traveling for thrte months.
Your second objection to the claim that bottle shock exists is that we can show jostling is not detrimental by noticing that jostling in a car or jostling by decanting does not cause bottle shock. Jay was arguing that the much more jostling in a cross country trip (which your objection grants but does not really respond to) is analogous to the effect of cooking meat at the same temperature for much more time. The “much more” is significant. I fail to see the straw man you claim him setting up. He doesn’t prove bottle shock exists but objects to your reason for arguing against it.
Since I tend to agree with Krugman’s economic analyses, of course, this may account for my appreciating Jay’s argument.
The best evidence for it comes from people in the trade like Oliver who taste the same wine repeatedly, at the producer and when it arrives, and say it’s not unusual for the wine to suffer in transit and recover after a few weeks. Oliver is by no means alone in that perception. And importers/distributors will sometimes hold the wine before delivering it so it doesn’t show badly – adding financing and storage costs. If they didn’t believe it was real, they’d push the wine out and accellerate their cash flow.
But I repeat myself … 
If it’s not alive, then dump all your bottles out, they’re dead.
That was just to point out that applying a given environmental condition for a short period of time is not the same as applying it for a long period of time. The argument made in the original post was that if a little bit of jostling didn’t have a negative impact why would a longer period of jostling have such an effect.
Edited to add: I see Jonathon understood and already explained it
+1
Dan Berger did exactly that (and WITHOUT a cooler in what turned out to be a VERY hot summer in Sonoma) a few years back then took the wines to a blind tasting with a bunch of vintners. Result: Pinot is delicate and couldn’t take the punishment, Cabernet tastes better after the punishment.
To John and Eric, the importer opinion is persuasive, but I still have yet to see any test demonstrate it, and it would be so easy to do.
Take the batch of Can Blau that arrived yesterday, blind taste a few bottles of that and a few bottles from the batch that arrived a month ago, and see if tasters can discern the difference.
Anyway, that point isn’t of any real importance to the customer, since we don’t make those macro decisions. But I’m quite confident from my experience that the new release of Williams Selyem you just got in the mail doesn’t taste any different the day after it arrived than the day before it was shipped to you.
When I was a philosophy major, that was known as an argument from authority. Aristotle frowned on those.
Why don’t you fly up north next time they’re about to ship, try a bottle, then try one on arrival in SoCal.
Yep.
I am a firm believer.
Best, Jim
I believe it happens, but it depends on so many factors. Some wines don’t feel it, others do. Throw in bottle variation, environmental factors, etc. If you must open a bottle right away, go ahead, but even in the absence of facts, why not wait a month or two just in case?