Our temps here have finally hit the 70s/80s after a long long… long hard MN winter. Now, I start wondering about the wine retailers are taking off trucks in the dead of the summer and those private cellars that get transported in the dead of a hot summer. Hasn’t stopped me from buying but I’d bet an awful lot of the wine we buy in the summer spend some time roasting on a hot truck. Not a big deal if immediate consumption wine but what about those $25 + wines we all want to age for 10 years?
I can’t imagine they’d send you an offer on a cellar before they’ve inspected and catalogued everything. I’m sure the cellar was delivered many months ago.
My understanding is that reputable retailers would only ship wine in temp controlled trucks.
I have my own suspicions about buying wine which just showed up on the shelf at Costco…in the middle of July or August.
Throughout the wine sales chain – importers, wholesalers/distributors, retailers – there are a few fanatics about storage and handling, but there are also too many, IMO, who aren’t.
Wines are delivered to retailers throughout the summer, many of the delivery trucks don’t have air conditioning in the box, and every retailer can’t get “the first shipment in the morning”.
Lettuce is treated better than many wines.
It’s not summer, which doesn’t start for another month. Any shipping should be dependent on you local temps, where it’s coming from, and how long it is in transit. Any large shipment is probably in a refer, but why not just ask the retailer instead of making blanket generalizations or assumptions?
Queasy. (sorry).
If the retailer is someone like HDH, no.
It’s true that not nearly enough care is taken in the supply chain in general, but when a retailer purchases a private cellar, they’re probably transporting the wine themselves (or arranging for transport if it’s coming from farther away) and taking great care in doing so. The few distributors we buy aged wines from also take care of the wines. The vans or trucks are refrigerated, and bottles always show up cool to the touch.
This. Not if I knew and trusted them.
JD
In the OP’s opening post, he mentioned both private cellar shipments and normal distribution shipments to retailers, so this isn’t just about the former which would likely get white glove treatment. Any retailer who says that all their normal deliveries from wholesalers arrive in temp-controlled trucks is kidding you, IMO, and it really doesn’t matter whether or not it’s officially summer if the temps are already in the upper 80s to low 90s, as we’ve already had here.
Ha, I had it spelled right the first time, asked my wife and switched to queezy. I’m such a terrible speller I don’t trust myself and I should have.
My experience locally is that it is variable by wholesaler. Some don’t even have cool warehouses. I saw several cases of Veuve Cliquot being loaded into a restaurant a couple summers ago and asked the driver if the delivery truck was refrigerated and he he said no. I also would guess many private individuals don’t give a thought to shipping out wines they intend to sell at auction in the summer. Personally, I wouldn’t think of shipping a wine above 60 degrees even if I planned to get rid of it at auction or to a retailer who takes private cellars but I think its naive to think it doens’t happen. I had a wine buddy once who got wines from Rochioli in the early summer and delivered a couple btls to me on a 80 plus day from his trunk at a meetup point. I took them but wanted to renege in the worst way. Fortunately, it was only a couple btls I drank early. Not everyone is picky about transporting and storing wines. Just like not everyone takes good care of a car.