I don’t think you’ll ever isolate all the variables using one or even a few pairs of bottles. The best bet would be to do massive numbers of a bottle–say a thousand, one half staying in a place, the other having being trucked, say, halfway across the U.S. and halfway back. Then you would have to use probably 200 tasters, with each pair receiving at least two tasters, probably three. At that point, you might have something like sufficiently large samples to see whether you could produce statistically significant variants. Good luck setting that one up.
Sure, confidence from a statistical standpoint be almost impossible to achieve. I think a lot of people would still be interested to see how some small trials turned out, especially given that we’re talking about whether or not this thing exists at all rather than percentages.
I don’t think anything near that would be required. You know how a random poll of 1000 Americans gets you within a couple percent of the national opinion?
If travel shock is real, a few small blind tastings of just arrived bottles versus ones that arrived a month ago would tell you.
I think the number of people who attest to having experienced it, most of those with no prior position on the phenomenon, really is enough to verify the existence of some kind of phenomenon. It might not be caused solely by travel, there may be different thresholds of minimum travel, of different forms of travel, or other causes that might be necessary, but claiming that everbody who has noted the phenomenon is a victim of bias confirmation is just a way of ignoring experiences that don’t accord with yours.
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Could it be that we only hear from those who believe TS to be real? Are there an equal or greater number who don’t? Oliver (to his credit) is the only importer I’m aware of posting on this thread.
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He was kidding about the 200 tasters, Chris.
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You only need one data point to claim affirmation. Unless it doesn’t agree with you, then need more data and/or the study was flawed.
-Al
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I think my brain is travel shocked. On the road all week.
Boat or plane? It makes a difference.
You could make a similar argument for chalk transferring from soil to wine or sugar making kids hyperactive.
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Actually, I wasn’t. For all 1,000 bottles to be tasted by two different tasters on the same day (that it occur on the same day is a fairly obvious requirement), you’d need an army of tasters.
I see plenty of skeptics. Nor do I see how that changes the blanket rejection of numbers of people’s experiences. The fact that many more haven’t experienced it doesn’t really change the issue. Numbers of people haven’t experienced lots of things. That doesn’t mean that others have.
Really? Have numbers of people experienced this phenomenon? Do the kinds have to drink the wine? Or their parents? Or just someone anywhere in the world?
I was thinking of importers, i.e., a much more limited set that is more likely to be able to observe TS if it exists, and whose business might impacted by it. To my knowledge, we oniy have a couple participating on this thread.
Gary Westby, the Champagne buyer for K&L, doesn’t put Champagne in tastings for some time after it arrives. He claims either BdB or BdN/blends bounce back more quickly, although I forget which (I think the former),
Just another point of view, of course. I’d imagine there are plenty of importers who just want to ship their product.
-Al
To me the most interesting finding was:
However, to my surprise, the wines that had been air-freighted had significantly lower levels of free SO2 (2-3pm) than the controls and the wines that had been transported by road. They also had higher spectral absorbance at 420nm, which indicated browning. This strongly suggested that a small amount of oxygen was absorbed through the cork while it was being air-freighted.
As someone who often flies with wine, some intended to cellar, this is a bit scary.
Yes, people have mostly ignored the fact that the study did show differences in the wines that had traveled, just ones that apparently showed in the comparative tasting.
-Al
Interesting info indeed - but 2-3 ppm SO2 difference may not be much depending upon the starting levels. ‘Significant’ is relative - would love to know more about the number of wines tested, red vs white, age of wines, etc
Cheers
If there is indeed some change in SO2 level, or worse, actual degradation, my suspicion would be that the wine sat somewhere at elevated temperature for a while, not that the actual act of transport caused this.
Our local wine group has an annual guest once a year who travels from Europe, and always carries a bottle or three with him. He has opened some of finest wines you can think of for us, always with bottle age, and always just a day or two after flying. I think one bottle over the years showed “poorly” (and that was by his standards, the rest of us thought it was excellent). Every other bottle, both white and red, has been superb, and lived up to its reputation.
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Yes, small change and wine should not be affected if their is still SO2 (which would probably combine with the modest amount of oxidation products that were produced).
There was only one wine in the study, a 2012 Ribera del Duero.
-Al