I understand what he is saying, but as others have said, here in Orlando when it is 95 degrees and the vehicle is sitting still and closed up, temps can reach over 130 degrees. I suppose the back of a UPS or Fed Ex truck will not reach quite that high, since it is moving and constantly being opened and closed which allows some airflow, but it’s easily over 100 for pretty much the entire day. And since my UPS and Fed Ex drivers never deliver until around 5pm, that means my wine would be on the truck for an entire day, all at or above 100 degrees. I think I will pass and be patient and ship in early November.
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Agree 100%. I try not to do any wine deliveries until late fall. Like Ian, I am at the end of both my fed ex and UPS routes and the wine could be sitting on a 100+ degree truck for 10-12 hours on delivery day, not to mention the previous day getting to the warehouse and sitting there over night.
When I was in wine retail in southern Florida in the dark ages, one of our biggest problems was the state of wine coming from distributors without air conditioned warehouses and trucks
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A lot of wine also gets cooked on its way over from Europe in unrefrigerated containers. There’s often a lack of care at all levels once the wine leaves the winery’s possession.
I am firmly in the camp of why take the risk? There’s almost never any rush for me to get wine I bought. I’d prefer never to ship in summer.
A NY retailer decided this week is safe in the northeast, with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s. Probably the risk is low, especially as it would get to Philly the next day under normal circumstances. But what if it gets left on the truck all day in the sun by accident? Carriers are experiencing all sorts of delays right now. I’d rather it get held for fall even if it’s being overly cautious.
Indeed. Made even worse with all the shipping delays lately, the wine could sit in the container for weeks and weeks in port just cooking away. Besides, once it comes into the distributor here, then it has to make its way to the store and you know they aren’t doing deliveries in a reefer truck.
A big reason to buy in the EU. At a fairly low price point it’s still cheaper per bottle including proper shipping refrigerated door to door.
I thought FLA was Forever Summer? They sure act it.
We only ship when weather permits, I work way to hard on these wines to have an “it’s usually fine” attitude.
But we also noticed that over the last year, both UPS and FedEx are often not getting to the end of day deliveries. It’s been more common than it used to for a wine to be out for delivery, according to tracking, for more than 1 day. Which likely means the wines have sat on a truck for more than 48 hours.
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Exactly. Thank you for expressing it so well. I don’t make the wine, of course, but I go to great lengths to protect the wine once I receive it, store it properly, serve it properly, drink it at propitious moments. It makes no sense to me to be lax in my attitude towards shipping.
It is still a problem in Indiana. Some of the smaller wholesalers deliver in refrigerated vans/trucks but the big wholesalers don’t have refers. I have no idea how hot the trucks get but when we get our deliveries in the mid afternoon the boxes aver very warm to the touch.
BTW, I absolutely think the OP should name the retailer. (S)he made his/her feelings known, publicly, and was entitled to do so. But we as consumers have a right to know that (s)he is taking this approach before spending money there. Given how (s)he described the products they sell, it seems unlikely I personally would be doing business there anyway, but I’d like to add the shop to my “nah bruh I’m good” list.
Craft and Curd
For the reason I mostly agree with them. I’ve had exactly one bottle that’s been heat damaged that hasn’t drank well. I do most of the time hold things until fall but if it’s one bottle from a place I don’t buy from often I run the risk of forgetting about it.
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Personally, I would not be ordering wine from anywhere in the summer unless I wanted it so bad I would pay for overnight with styro/ice.
Now, put your business hat on. If well above 95% of your summer shipments go without reported issues (whether or not the wine was hot), why not? There’s a lot of consumers that are unconcerned about the transit temperatures. I can confirm from experience the durability of some of the popular high octane wines. Last summer, a damaged shipment of Prisoner went FL to CA and back in around 2 weeks. Opened a bottle and it tasted like…Prisoner. God only knows what it was exposed to, but it showed cork seepage.
So yeah, we’re down the road from C&C and we’re shipping our asses off through the summer. That said, we present options such as cool storage, express and/or shipping in styro/ice for 2 or less days duration. We watch the temps on the receiving end and will prompt delays for better weather. And if people request ground shipping on more special wines, we’ll certainly intervene and strongly suggest safer options.
We love wine, but we also love to continue making a living at it.
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Btw craft and curd was the place that had $20 2013 lumpp a vigne rouge a few years ago.
No confidence vote here! Not to mention as funny as his/her comment is about “assholes”…not a fan of anyone who refers to customers that way. BUT to each their own!
Fair enough…
Yes it’s Craft & Curd in Tampa.
The thing that really struck me was his opinion on storage of his inventory.
This guy has writes lots of great email blasts. But Florida is just about the last place I’d be blase about shipping temps. I thought he’d be offering some reassuring take like, “don’t worry, the Fed Ex truck is gone 500 miles when the day is done” as opposed to “my leaking bottle of jammy cabernet still tastes like jammy cabernet, we’re all good.”
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Yes. I’ve had apparently cooked wine that drank ok. I’ve also had apparently cooked wine that was terrible. I think even said retailer would agree that the chance of a cooked wine drinking well is much less than that of a transported in cooler weather wine drinking well.
For cheaper wines, sure, gamble if it pleases you. For your collectibles? Seems rather foolish.
Ask said retailer how many leaky bottles he would purchase for his own cellar.
If you gotta have it now, overnight it. If you don’t, what’s 3-6 more months?
Retailer wants to ship wine in any weather because that makes it easier for him to run his business. So he sends an email to all his customers claiming that shipping wine in extreme heat is no problem… buuuuut he doesn’t want to debate the issue. Cameron Hughes did the same thing, claiming his wine was not susceptible to heat damage.
Yep. He said something about sterile filtering the wine so it didn’t matter if they shipped in the middle of the summer. Def never heard that before.