I’ve read so many conflicting articles on the subject. I tend to pop open bottles not long after receiving in shipment. I’ve rarely been disappointed and almost always have enjoyed the wine. This past week I had a couple bottles from Sojourn (Silver Eagle and Ridgetop) Pinot and the experience wasn’t so good. The Silver Eagle was hot, disjointed and maybe a bit flabby. The Ridgetop was fruit forward on first pour but on proceeding sips the alcohol stood up and the rest of it’s stuffing sorta fell apart and tasted watered down. Both bottles were popped 3-4 days after receiving shipment and were laying down in my wine fridge at 55F.
I didn’t care for either wine and neither did my wife. I was more confused since CT ratings were favorable. RP was not so favorable so not sure what to make of them. So I started thinking maybe a bit of bottle shock?
Bottle shock and travel shock are two different things. The former is caused by the dose of sulfur often given to a wine at bottling, and AFAIK isn’t a controversial subject. It sounds to me like you’re talking about the travel shock, which is of course hotly debated.
The only way they might be related is if the wine was shipped immediately after bottling, which does happen, particularly when a winery is in need of space or cash.
While the causes of “Bottle Shock” are not agreed upon, the prevailing wisdom seems to blame the wine’s reaction to temporary anaerobic environment (the bottle)…
I’ve noticed that even with the increased Sulfur one might add right before bottling, the wines tend to taste pretty good for about a week, and then go to hell for 2-6 months…
My wife and I recently spent a night near Yosemite for a Halloween get-together with friends and we brought several bottles of wine. I packed the bottles in a styrofoam shipper and placed them in the trunk. (ambient temp was maybe 60 degrees outside). I opened them shortly after we arrived and none of them showed well at first. They all seemed a bit shrill and hollow. I have had some of these before with little to no travel (at home or nearby) so I certainly had a baseline for what they should taste like.
After about 2 hours of slow aeration in the bottle they all seemed to come together again and taste more like I expected. Even then, the texture and mid-palate seemed off even though they showed some of the same notes. I imagine if I threw them in a wide bottom decanter that they may have come more to life but there was absolutely a marked difference in the wines (thankfully they were all relatively inexpensive wines). Keep in mind, the road is windy and we were driving a sports car on the way up so these definitely got jostled around for an extended period of time.
So for what it’s worth, I do believe that travel makes a difference based on this experience. They were all young wines (<3 years of age) so sediment isn’t really an issue. My best guess is that somehow the activity impacts the SO2 in the bottle in a way that’s different from agitation/swirling in the glass (which releases elements, whereas the sulphur is trapped/bound in bottle).
Search “travel shock” and you’ll find a number of long threads on the subject. You’ll also discover that travel shock is used to mean some different things. It’s a hotly debated topic, but such well trodden ground that I don’t think there is anything new for anyone to add to those past threads.
I wonder if you might clarify your meaning here. Do you mean you opened them within a few minutes or hours of taking the trip? Or do you mean you opened them several days later? I’m just curious what the reference is for “shortly”.
In that case, I would consider the possibility that it was you who experienced travel shock, rather than the wine. A long car trip may not do such wonderful things for the mind and palate, and in my experience, differences with the taster are as often responsible for variations as differences in the wine itself.
Obviously I wasn’t there, but I’m just suggesting the possibility. To me, that explanation is more plausible than your scientifically-unsupportable theory about sulfur compounds.
How is my palate being travel shocked any more provable scientifically? Not trying to be confrontational, but it seems like a curious take. I’ve traveled many times and tasted in the wine country immediately after arriving without any issue. (With pretty familiar wines as well).
As Chris alluded too this is a pretty worn territory so I doubt my personal anecdotes are going to really prove anything. But it was an interesting experience and the difference was pretty significant.
I will say too though that the wine likely got far more jostled than air travel or even standard delivery. So that’s something to keep in mind.
The human brain is quite easily fooled. Psychology is quite well known to play a dramatic role in subjective perception in any number of ways. Conversely, it has never been shown that the degree of agitation that sulfur compounds are subject to inside wine in any form form of transportation has any structural effect on those compounds.
I’m certainly not trying to insult you in any way. I’m just suggesting that the effect you are describing may well have a more ready explanation in psychology than it does in physics. I don’t mean just for you, for anybody.
I suppose until a valid double-blind experiment with a sufficient sample size is attempted on the subject, we’ll never know the answer to this question with any certainty.
