What temperature do you consider too hot for safe shipping ? I was surprised when one west coast winery told me their threshold was 85 degrees, as I’ve always sought temps below 70, but am I worrying too much ?
70 is a pretty good number.
Please examine the temps where you ship through as well. I’m in Colorado and shipping from parts of CA can go through Vegas for ground shipping, so while it may be that source is 65 and destination is 50, the middle could be 105.
Needless to say, I try never to ship ground from CA during the summer!
On the other end of the spectrum, Shipping from parts of Oregon and Washington can be a winter time nightmare with shipping going through Idaho and Wyoming where temps there can be below zero where destinations can be between 40 and 70.
Route matters a lot as does night time low. Companies who do shipping wine for a living know major routes and times of travel thru those routes. Just because it hits 85 for 30 minutes as a day time hight does not mean the wine gets to 85. If the night time low is 45 vs. day time high of 85 the wine should trend more in the 65 degree range. Thermal mass of 3, 6, or 12 pack I am sure plays in as well.
There was a thread a while back that has a lot of great info about this topic. After a couple days the wine tends to stabilize even a little below average temp. This test was on temperatures over 90 in a garage.
In not ideal temps we have our shipper throw in a few ice packs and upgrade the shipping to 3 day or better. There are also refrigerated options now where the wine is keep in a cooler until the last day of delivery. Hopefully its going to a business or your driver has a shady spot to put it.
I agree with Joe that the average of the high and the low play into what temp the wine will actually reach on a given trip. I would figure that the thermal mass of the entire load/truck would play in as well as the color of the truck. For that reason I am less of a fan of shipping in dark brown trucks.
Just one of the tools I use when making a decision to ship. You can see max and min temperatures for a few days across the country. Always helpful if you think an order is going to sit over a weekend, etc. and this came in handy during this winter with rollercoaster temperatures.
Karen thats an awesome link!
Our shipping company ships all non west coast orders out on Fridays so it sits in Sonoma county over the weekend but is “in the system, on its way”. I can’t recall a single order that sat in a warehouse over a weekend out of Sonoma as they arrive usually by Thursday with Friday being the extra day incase there is a issue with signature or something. To many variables with over weekend wine any other way IMO.
Karen,
Thanks for the link ! I usually look at The Weather Channel Maps | weather.com, but your site seems easier to navigate.
For you, Joe, Andrew and anyone else here,
Taking everything that’s been mentioned into account - ground or air, expected route, packing materials (Styrofoam, pulp, with or without cooling packs), shipping date, shipper (white or brown truck) - is there a number that says to you “It’s too hot to ship” ? I’m guessing those who live in the more northern parts of the country would also ask if there’s a temperature that’s too cold to ship, but that’s not an issue for me in east TX.
Its to hot to ship for us when our shipping company lets us know it is. They know we want cooler temps than some as were doing mostly low sulfur Pinot Noir. Usually this is an average temperature (day time high/night time low) of 70-75.
Funny you mention to cold, the only 2 shipments I have lost in 15+ years in the DTC wine business, with the same shipping company, were to ND and SD when some arctic cold came out of no were. In both cases it was sustained temperatures well below zero.
I’ve lost two packages as well. One was the ‘my delivery driver signs for my packages & leaves them on my porch when I’m not home’, which is a great situation to be in but not when you are on vacation and it is single digits outside. Other was a missed Friday delivery during one of the arctic blasts, the truck wasn’t unloaded over the weekend.