A great example of this is parents believing that sugar causes hyperactivity in children. There was one study in the 1970s that claimed this connection, and parents have believed it ever since. And yet over a dozen studies since that time have found no connection. Simply put, the human body doesn’t work that way.
But because it is widely believed, there is a ton of perceived evidence of it happening. “Man, my son is bonkers right now – oh, that’s right, he had a cookie an hour ago!” And so the conclusion gets stronger and stronger because we have slotted information into the formula we thought was a correct one.
Same thing for travel shock. People have heard the theory, occasionally open a bottle that isn’t as good as they hoped it would be, and “oh, I took this along on the trip, the wine must be travel shocked, that explains it” or “oh, this arrived in Fed Ex last week, that must be the reason.” And so the opinion creates the evidence to support it.
Regardless of where you come down on travel shock or if you even care, it’s good to remember that the mind works this way, and to try to think through it when it leads you astray on whatever topic (politics is particularly an area where you’ll see this phenomenon a lot, on all sides).
I see the study that started this thread, and another, less formal one, as contrary evidence. I understand that you disagree because the wines weren’t sent by sea. That makes no sense to me. For me to believe in this phenomenon, I would want to see evidence that it does exist.
I tried to clarify in what I posted just before this post of yours that I am not saying this. I suspect you published this post before reading my previous one. I think tasting memory is what many, many people in the trade use, and the good ones use it well. When I was a retail wine buyer (which I was for 10+ years), I thought I got something right when the market rewarded one of my favorite producers. That happened many times. But to me, identifying travel shock is a lot different than the difference between a Bourgogne and a Grand Cru, or how good one producer is compared to another. It seems likely that bias is a far stronger influence than correct memory and tasting consistency (both need to be very precise) in the non-blind travel shock scenario with no controls.
Sure, and even though I disagree that there is reason to do this, I respect your decision. Really.
Then I stand corrected. Thanks. I guess we both believe something that is not well established in this case. I have talked to a grower who knows a lot about geology who also believes this. Your Piedmont example is a great one. I think about how the style of Monvigliero is somewhat like the wines from up north.
Thanks, I couldn’t think of a non-political example. Having young kids, I hear the sugar myth repeated by parents all the time. It’s amazing how widespread the belief is and how much evidence there is refuting it.
I found that dissertation unhelpful because I am only referring to ocean freight, and he didn’t discuss ocean freight. I almost never air-freight, and I haven’t had problems with trucking only.
You say ‘But to me, identifying travel shock is a lot different than the difference between a Bourgogne and a Grand Cru, or how good one producer is compared to another.’ I I think that they are very similar kinds of judgements. Experienced tasters make these kinds of determinations all the time.
Re the question of travel shock:
I suppose an experiment with the same wine ocean freighted vs air freighted might demonstrate something…has anyone ever done this??
On the subject of breathing wine:Some of us have done experiments and none of them has shown a clear advantage of ‘breathing’ a wine. Whenever the subject somes up, somebody says, But I have seen it with my own eyes! It happened to me yesterday.!! I was drinking a bottle of Barolo and clearly the last glass was the best!!
I find this thread fascinating - and shows the true difficulty in ‘objectively and definitively’ showing any proof about travel shock.
I really like the way the OP went about this, using a tried and tried ‘triangle test’ to ensure that a) folks could note a difference between the samples first and foremost and then b) a preference for one vs the other. Straightforward and easily quantifiable.
I think this concept could be applied to so many ‘conventional wisdoms’ many hold near and dear about wine - bottle shock, unfiltered vs filtered wines, wines bottled with different levels or zero sulfur, wines bottled under different closures. Many folks ASSUME they know which one they prefer but do not objectively ‘test’ to see if this is truly the case or not.
This I find interesting. So, in your experience of tasting many wines that have come to you from many places, you see problems with ocean-freighted wines that demonstrate travel shock but have not, or do not generally, see it in wines that have only seen a truck? May I ask, if you had to estimate an incidence rate of travel shock in ocean-freighted wines, what would it be?
I would say that it averages out to maybe 10-15% of the wines we check, when you taste with us we can ask my colleagues who might have a more precise idea of how many wines we re-taste.
Of course the odds are that all of the wines we taste together will be effusively perfect immediately…
Larry’s idea about blind tasting the results of bioi vs organic vs etc…is quite interesting.
It seems to me that nowadays wines are judged by how they are made than what they taste like.
How many times do I read something about how Ch Morris has goats that replace tractors, only harvests acc to the lunar calendar, pays their workers a living wage…etc…and therefore the wine is good.
I am convinced that if you told a wine writer thatyou used pesticides, mildecides,plenty of SO2, fined the crap out of the wine before sterile filtration and then poured a glass of La R+Tache they would think the wine stinks.
This is exactly the reasoning used to support travel shock.
Someone once told me wines tasted chalky because of chalk from the soil ending up in the glass. When I said there was no possible mechanism for this, guess what their response was?
But, unless you’re suggesting some non-linear evolution, the ITB people are saying that some wines don’t taste as good on arrival as (a) they did at the source earlier or (b) in the US a few weeks later. That is consistent with a temporary effect due to shipping.
Doug:My point exactly. It would be very difficult. and expensive to prove the travel shock thesis. It is all anecdotal evidence.
With breathing it is easy to do an experiment.
It is all entirely anecdotal of course, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to set up wine “experiments” to confirm my observations, but there have been many, many times a wine seemed closed and unpleasant until being thrown into a decanter. Particularly young wines. Once decanted the wines generally showed much better and I can’t recall one ever being worse, though some remained very closed.
I’m not sure if this is what you meant by “breathing” a wine, or if you meant only a slow-ox approach. If the latter, I have less opinion on that, though opening a bottle midday to be served with dinner has often served me well.
As for the last bottle of the night often being best, I tend to believe it probably is better for having been exposed to more oxygen, but the influence of having consumed until that point and the overall passage of time makes it too difficult to have it say much about causation.
Or . . . it could be due to . . . time in bottle and the effects of the slight micro-oxidation that occurs over that month period. Or it could be due to bottle variation. Or it could be due to the specific ‘setting’ that the wine was tried that day.
The fact is that we truly don’t know - so yes, we can’t rule out ‘travel shock’ as a possibility, but it’s just one such possibility and without further ‘study’ there simple is no way to pinpoint this.
I don’t think it’s that difficult for an importer. Many importers sometimes order shipments of wine they already have in stock (same vintage and bottling). With air shipping it’s a lot easier, but I understand that Oliver and some other people think it only happens with sea freight. Plausibility on that seems close to zero to me, but still, it could be tested.