Shaken Wine from long Drive

WINE TALK
1

I will be driving to Dallas, immediately followed by a trip to Austin this weekend.

I want to bring several bottles of wine to the reunion of long-time friends, but I worry about the long drive and the risk of bottle-shock/road sickness.

I will be leaving Shreveport, Louisiana, for Dallas tomorrow afternoon to pick up a friend flying in from Hong Kong. The next day, we go to Austin.

Any pointers or advice? I do have nice Styrofoam and cardboard wine boxes…

2

You shouldn’t have any issues; I travel with wine frequently with zero issues.

3

The alternative is: Ship the wine to your destination. In addition to travel by van, train and plane, the Samsonite gorilla, (you remember him from the commercials), works for the shipping company, giving it that extra kick and toss.

Just put the shipper in the coolest place in the car and that’s not the trunk if you warm weather or direct sunlight on the trunk lid.

4

Of course you could have ‘issues.’ However it’s a relative term. What wines are you bringing? Do they have much sediment or are they younger? Will they have time to rest or will it be pop & pour right out of the car? Will they be in the trunk? How are your shocks? How many potholes will you run over during the trip?

More than likely your wines will be just fine. But it’s not a question that can have a simple yes/no answer. An old Bdx walking 10 blocks in my wine bag can be easily agitated.

5

Aside from age or an extraordinary amount of sediment – and I’m dubious about those two as well – I don’t believe you’ll notice a difference, even if you drink it in the parking lot after shaking it for good measure.

6

Stop the car before you drink the wine.

[cheers.gif]

7

What Brent said.

Styrofoam and cardboard are irrelevant. They hold the bottle, not the liquid. If you have old wines with a lot of sediment, try to get where you’re going a few hours early and stand the bottles upright. If the wines don’t have a lot of sediment, or they’re young wines, don’t worry. I fly with wine and drink it on arrival.

8

This.

I take wine with me almost every time I fly or drive out of town, and it’s always fine, including the day I arrive. The only exception would be a bottle with sediment could have the sediment stirred up, and that could persist for however long it takes that kind of sediment to settle down.

Have you read all those blind tastings where people pick out the bottles that were just transported as being different and worse than the ones that were resting? Neither did I, because they don’t exist, despite how easy it would be to conduct that kind of blind tasting.

9

Thanks everyone. I am not going to bring the older stuff.

I am probably going to bring a bottle of Limerick Lane Bedrock (or 1910) 2013 Zinfandel,
Sandlands Chenin Blanc,
a few Carlisle Zins and
either Carignane 2007 or the 2011 Two Acres,
Two Shepherds Mourvedre 2012,
Precedent Evangelho Vineyard Zinfandel 2012.

I am flipflopping on a couple of others, as upwards of ten people will be there. However, they would be just as happy with beer, so I don’t want to sacrifice any fancy pants wines.

10

I’ll defend to the death your right to say it, but this is the craziest thing I have read on wineberserkers in a long time. I may be in the minority, but I can certainly see how wines suffer from being jostled. After moving my wine cellar, I would not touch a bottle for at least two months (and that was just one room to the next). Even some young wines throw sediment (like Carlisle or Turley) and any unfiltered wine will throw at least a small sediment. All you have to do is drink a bottle of Aubert chard to see my point. Start with a bright, pure extraction of minerals and citrus oil, the candlelight glinting green as it refracts through the diamond like clarity of the wine. Then shake it up and have another pour. The muddled pond water in your glass smells like lemonheads candy. The wine is one-dimensional and thick with a chalky finish. You wonder what all the fuss is about.

Shaking up the sediment will not necessarily turn the bottle into a bad wine, but it can significantly impair its overall impression, in my opinion. You should hang out with those famous Burgundy winemakers that say the soul of their wine is in the sediment and always dump it in their glasses and drink it. To each his own in this case… [cheers.gif]

But as to the wines traveling, I think young wines are plenty hearty and should not be unduly damaged. If it was twenty year old burg, or bordeaux, it would be different.

11

Texas is pretty flat, and unless your driving takes you on red clay or stone roads, I wouldn’t worry about it. Now, this might be a different story if you were taking it on the Alaska or Yukon Highway.

12

You don’t want to stir up sediment in an old bottle. I’ve been served many bottles of old wine that had been shaken up in transit and were cloudy with sediment and tasted nasty. Most would have been fine if they’d been allowed to settle for a few hours at least.

13

This, my friend, is the craziest thing I’ve read. How do you get your wine from your cellar to your table?! And what about pouring it into the glass? Imagine how damaged the wine gets when it takes that huge plunge from the bottle! neener

This makes sense to me, although I have no experience with wine that has enough age to make this a concern.

However, this doesn’t seem like it would be a concern if the wine is riding in the car. Assuming the wine is standing up in the car in a styro shipper or in the cup-holder, even if it’s shaken a bit, the sediment won’t travel up. Or are we talking about cruising in our Mars rover across the red planet? [snort.gif] Playing spin the bottle with an old bottle of wine? Probably a bad idea. But transporting the wine from your cellar to the restaurant? The movement just doesn’t seem violent enough to make a difference. I could, of course, be completely wrong. [cheers.gif]

14

Trust me, it will, if the sediment is fine.

15

I’m with Kyle on this 100%. I’m picturing Fred bringing his wine to the table, sweating and grimacing tensely as he strains not to jostle it, like Eddie Murphy carrying that paper bag into the gun range in Beverly Hills Cop.

All joking aside, Fred, where did you ever get that idea that wine needs two months to settle after moving from one room to another in your house? Is it those cards they stick into wine club shipments warning you to let the wine rest 2 months on its side in the dark at 55 degrees after you receive them?

Seriously, liberate yourself from this misconception, not because it matters who is right or wrong between you and me, but just to make your wine life easier and less stressful. Take two bottles or half bottles of some younger wine you like, jostle one around in your car, carry it around on your bike for an hour, put it in a backpack and carry it around with you, or whatever, have the other one sitting perfectly still for months, then try the two of them blind and see if you can tell which one is which, and tell that the one that was moved around is worse.

Or, if you prefer, order some more bottles of something you received months ago from some winery, then the day the wines arrive, serve one that just came from UPS blind against the one sitting in your cellar.

Once you realize that it made no difference, it will make your life a lot easier.

16

just shaken not stirred

17

Maybe if you drive like a granny on perfectly maintained flat roads. Otherwise, the sediment will get stirred up.