I received a FedEx shipping notification yesterday about a pending shipment from Ridge. I thought this was odd since I didn’t have anything in my cellar tracker and I stopped shipments for the summer a few months ago at this point. I called Ridge and found out a few interesting things:
- I had tendered the order in March, it was my Estate wines that they hold me hostage for in order to get my Monte Bello. This solves the mystery of what it was, and I just overlooked pulling these wines into my pending list since I didn’t specifically purchase them, they get auto-ordered.
- They had a shipping hold note on the wine from March. (wierd)
- They decided to ship in late June because their system showed that shipping temperatures across the country were okay. (even wierder)
- They will ship as long as no temperatures on the route show above 85 degrees!
- I called them yesterday while sitting in rush hour traffic in Philadelphia where the temperature was 87 on my car thermometer.
- My wine was sitting in a Fed Ex truck somewhere in the greater region in the same conditions.
I made a deal with the customer service rep that I am going to open one when they show up today and call them back when they are cooked. Which seems almost a certainty if they spent all afternoon in a truck yesterday. They also had no explanation as to why the wine didn’t ship in the spring and why they didn’t reach out before pulling the trigger on shipping now. I have every faith this thread will end with a replacement order being held until fall for shipping.
What I think is most interesting is that they will ship up to 85 degrees en route. That just seems very high to me knowing how hot the inside of a delivery truck will get if its sunny and 85.
For the record, they left California on the 21st so we are on day 5.