At what temperature are you all starting to stop shipments? I feel like in PA we are right on the cusp this week with being able to get deliveries. We have highs in the mid thirties and lows in the mid twenties. I can normally get items from NY/NYC in 1 day. ie: order today, ship tomorrow, deliver on Tuesday. Am I pushing my luck?
I found Rougeard @ $135ea (wine.com stacked coupons) and it feels like a deal I want to jump on. I’m just a little skeptical of them holding for spring shipment.
TW
Good question, but I live at the other end of the state, Lake Erie Lakeshore, which at times is basically like the North Pole. I have done experiments where I have left a bottle of cheap wine, in my backyard, in a Styrofoam shipper for days with nary an ice crystal in it. With any kind of decent shipper, you will be fine for a while yet. Frankly I worry far more about heat damage. Curious about the Rougeard deal. That seems like an insanely good price these days!
I’m generally ok with shipping unless the temperature all day will be below freezing. I haven’t had any issues. It was a bigger issue in WI.
No issues until the teens. I love cool weather shipping because it’s basically free temp controlled shipping. The bottles show up like straight out of the cellar.
I would ship under these conditions and have many times without a second thought and never had a problem.
Well based on the feedback here, I pulled the cord. Now lets cross our fingers that the storm coming later this week doesn’t mess up the delivery!
TW
Yes, this. And that is mid-upper teens consistently throughout the journey of DAYS. If it dips into the teens only “passing through”, it won’t freeze. Drink a glass and stop worrying. Or buy insurance.
On this topic, one of my Berserker Day purchases shipped out on Friday and is slowly moving towards the East coast, expected delivery tomorrow. Given the route that it has taken, I am not too concerned about the wine freezing but it does make me curious as to what the impact to the wine would be if it did freeze. The characteristics of ‘cooked’ wine are well documented. If a wine partially freezes but not enough to push out the cork, would you be able to tell? If so, in what way would the freeze change the wine?
I’ve been shipping thousands of packages for the last decade and only lost two to cold. One was a missed delivery on Friday in Chicago in a polar vortex (truck wasn’t unloaded over weekend) & the other was a my driver signs for me in Minnesota and recipient gone for a week. It’s hard to freeze wine unintentionally
The freezing temp of wine is about 22F, depending on the alcohol level. Of course, in styro, it would take a while to get that low.
But I don’t think freezing is the only risk. I find that red wines left in the refrigerator for extended periods sometimes leave thin sediment crusts on the sides and bottom of bottle, so something is precipitating. And that’s at 40F. I recall that tartaric acid can also fall out if the wine gets really cold, producing wine stones. Those only seem to be an issue with extended times at cold temps, but they’d make me nervous about shipping by ground when it’s much below freezing.
I have never had an issue and had many thousands of bottles shipped to me in the winter. It’s much better than warm weather. If I lived in MSP or somewhere really cold i might worry about it more.
I live in MN. I’ve had some “slushy” deliveries over the years, but unless the cork is pushed out no problems whatsoever with cold.
Starting Saturday shipping thru the Upper Midwest might be reconsidered for about a week. There’s a series of double digit below zero over night temps in the offing.
I received a shipment from Oregon this morning in connection with a Berserker Day purchase and no problems at all. Then again, while the weather in NC is cold with some occasional flurries, it isn’t like the weather in MN and IL!
FedEx lost track of a Berserker Day delivery last week and unexpectedly left it on my doorstep in sub-zero temps this morning (four days after scheduled delivery date).
These are whites and I live near Chicago, where temps have been single digits the last few days.
Through the (quite cold) bottles, I can see lots of (presumably) tartrate crystals floating around.
Are these salvageable? Winery has already offered to replace them and take it up with FedEx.
I left a bottle of Marcassin chardonnay in the freezer by mistake – getting it colder than cellar temp for later serving, but didn’t need it – and the wine froze and pushed the cork all the way out. Since the wine was frozen it just stayed attached to the cork where it exited the bottle.
I put the bottle upright in a bowl for it to come to close-to-room-temperature, put the cork back in, served it the next night.
It was just as good as expected! Not that I recommend this practice, but I didn’t think the wine itself was damaged at all.
I think those bottles are likely perfectly fine, especially if there is no evidence of a hard freeze such as the corks being pushed up.
I live in Maine, and for the most part retailers seem to think shipping in super cold temps are not an issue. I do take an issue with it though. For instance I had one retailer ship wines to me on 12/31/2020. Which is my mind was super, super risky. Luckily I was working from home that day (I don’t most of the time). When the wines came off the truck I used a Vin Temp to check them and they all ran the range of 33-35 degrees. Needless to say, I no longer plan to age any of these wines even though I expected to age one of them that I bought 4 bottles of 20+ years. It just no longer feels like it’s worth taking the risk & space.
What do you think is the risk of aging wines that didn’t even reach the freezing point of water? If the cork hasn’t moved, I wouldn’t be the least bit concerned.
Also if the glass temped at 33, the liquid inside was most likely at least a couple of degrees warmer.