Tablas Creek blog - effect of temps on wine shipping

Nice post, very timely.

Timely indeed. I received some wine from a friend last week. He’s in the southern part of California and I’m in north Texas. Based on the route, it spent 1-2 days in the 70s, and 1-2 days in the mid 80s. 12 bottles arrived and one bottle had a cork pushed up about a quarter inch (it cracked the seal on a wax top). No other bottles, either wax top or regular foil capsule, showed any signs of raised corks (or seepage). The lone bottle with the raised cork shows zero signs of seepage and the cork is tight…can’t even push it back down. Semi surprising based on only a max of 1-2 days in the 80s.

I’m assuming the bottle with the raised cork is slightly compromised (it’s a 2017 Paso GSM blend, so at least it’s beefy), but I’m hoping the other bottles are in good shape!

And what about screw cap bottles?

When the screwcaps are pushed up, you are in big trouble!

Well I hope the Tablas Creek article was accurate because I’m not happy with FedEx’s bungling. My Goodfellow order was shipped out Monday, with ETA of Wednesday. Then it got updated to Thursday because it left one of the hubs late. Then this afternoon it was further updated to ETA of Friday by 9:00 pm. It arrived in Walnut CA at 9:43 pm last night, then shows “in transit” Walnut at 9:46 pm today, and then at City of Industry 2:02 pm today. Walnut is less than 10 miles from City of Industry. Needless to say I’m not happy about this two day (or who knows how long) delay, with today warming up and tomorrow being even warmer.

Rickie,

Welcome to the new world of shipping wines! I’ve seen so many of my Fed Ex shipments be ‘delayed’ that unless you do overnight or expedited, there’s not much you can do other than ‘grin and bear it’. I cannot fathom how many more packages they are shipping these days than usual . . .

Cheers

Thanks. I figured they are busier than normal but it really irks me to see such inactivity in the tracking info. Especially when the hubs are not that distant from each other. I’m pretending that I live across country and so the length of time is more “normal” that way.

you too eh?
My pkg left Napa Tuesday Night. Was supposed to Arrive by today.
1am Wed - Left Napa CA
5am - 7am Wed - Arrived & left Tracy CA
1:48am Thurs - In Transit Walnut CA
1:48pm Thurs - In Transit Walnut CA

Srsly 12hours of not moving in transit? I now FedEx Ground Hub is in Bloomington, Carson, Pacoima, & City of Industry all have hubs but I’m more than a little erk that it was in transit for 12hrs and didnt go anywhere.

Here in Louisiana, it’s almost always a gamble shipping cross country. Many bottles have arrived in an expeditious manner, only to be hot to the touch right out of the box or with a bulging cork.

Yup, same here. I’m as upset at you are, looking at how long that stuff sat in Walnut for both of us. What the heck is going on??? You could literally walk it from Walnut to City of Industry faster than that.

Calling FedEx support is useless, too. I called them earlier today and got connected to some automated response which told me, after inputting my tracking number, that my package WOULD arrive today and was on its way to the destination hub. Yeah, right. So then I stayed on the line to try and talk to a living person but gave up because the wait was so long. Even had I been able to talk to someone that wouldn’t have done any good anyway.

Hi Rickie,

I’m not sure what the heck is up with FedEx, but a two day delay is frustrating.

1. if you have an issue with the wines at all, please let me know and we’ll replace them.

2. more pertinently to the Tablas Creek blog. In my opinion, another positive aspect to Diam is their uniformity. The physics portion is indeed the important portion(similarly, while people often refer to the chemistry of winemaking, the physics is much more important). Increasing volume and pressure through expansion from heat creates a “push” of the wine inside the bottle. If you have a weak seal or a cork with inconsistent density, the wine can find a path to releasing pressure. Who hasn’t seen an older cork where 99% is in good shape but there’s one obvious weak point where the seepage has move significantly past the rest of the cork. Diam tend to be less flexible in expansion/contraction compared to natural cork, but they run a bit bigger than corks and seal the bottle well. They have a distinct advantage in being uniform in density, so there are no channels in the closures for wine to seep up(and possibly out).
   That said, if the bottles get warm enough seepage is still very likely.

Hi Marcus,

The wines arrived yesterday around 11:30 and were cool to the touch, with no apparent damage. They’re now all safely in the cooler and I can’t wait to try them! I don’t know what caused the delay, but Vince L. above reported the same sort of delay at the Walnut hub. I don’t even remember seeing a stop at Walnut for other prior FedEx orders so maybe something is out of whack over there.

Thanks for making the wines available with your generous offers!

Interesting data point: I had a few bottles delivered today in cardboard By Fedex. It’s low/mid 80s out and the wine still felt pretty cool, barely above room temp.

Physics is everything! Even chemistry is physics, although it didn’t go well when I tried to convince my father (chemistry professor).

Quality of the cork is hugely important. But, another significant factor is just the fill on the bottle. This is because wine is much less compressible than air. It also does not expand as much volumetrically with temperature, but there is a lot more wine than air in the bottle. So, the wine expands and compresses the gas in the head space. If there is enough gas, that’s all it does. If not, the pressure becomes high enough that it pushes the cork. (The wine can also lubricate the cork if it starts seeping past it.)

-Al

I will reiterate what I said in another thread. FedEx and UPS are swamped. Everyone is buying everything online, and the trucks are stuffed. It’s not about incompetence or screw ups. It’s about trying to ramp up service levels in a pandemic.

So, is the consensus that a bottle of wine isn’t heat damaged if the cork isn’t protruding?

I paid a lot of extra money to overnight and receive a case of wine by noon today (before it hit 80 degrees); yet, I didn’t receive the wine until 7 p.m. (also, it wasn’t transported via temp controlled shipping like I was told). The bottles were all roughly 80 degrees when I received them, but there were no protruding corks and the one bottle with no capsule didn’t even have any evidence of any wine moving up the cork. How would you feel about the condition of these bottles?

First and foremost, I would certainly take this up with the winery directly - the fact that you paid a lot of extra money to have it overnighted and then to have it not delivered until the evening is simply not right. And if they said temp controlled trucking overnight and that did not happen, they gave you inaccurate info. The wines themselves may be okay but the winery should probably give you back some $$$ that they received from you for services promised but not delivered. At least that’s my take. They can then ‘go after’ the shipping company.

The issues I’ve seen have all been ground related - whether Fed Ex or UPS - and not expedited. Let us know please.

Cheers.

It wasn’t a winery, it was Benchmark Wine. I wrote them polite email that explained how upset I was and how I didn’t remotely get what I paid for, and I already heard back from them and they are 100% making it right (even though it appears to UPS’ fault [and I hope they recover from UPS]). I really love Benchmark. Great selection and really great customer service.