Travel shock

Steve_Saxon · January 28, 2009, 9:12pm

Is there such a thing?.

I just got a shipment in today from WineBid and want to drink the 97 Cornas tonight so does bottle shock exist or is it a lie.

Thanks.

Cris_Whetstone · January 28, 2009, 9:32pm

Bottle shock comes along when the wine is bottled. Many winemakers so say it exists. How long they need to rest is a whole 'nother discussion.

Travel shock is from shipping wines around and is controversial. I think it can exist but the particulars are something I have no idea of. Some wines seem to drink great off the truck and others have seemed sullen only to be great 6 months later. Don’t think there is any real consensus on the subject. I know Jon Rimmerman from Garagiste recommends leaving the wines along for a couple months when they ship.

Ken_V · January 28, 2009, 9:37pm

I agree with Chris. I’ve had cases of travel shock, but some occasions where travel seemed to have no effect. I try to let all my wine rest for at least a month after it arrives, but if you’re desperate and have more bottles, give it a shot!

Bob_Wood · January 28, 2009, 9:38pm

I’ve experienced travel shock in pinot noir. I think the bigger wines, and Cornas is certainly one, are more immune.

Eric_Anderson · January 28, 2009, 9:42pm

If you use the age as a determining factor, IMHO the older the wine - the more you ought to let it settle after travel. So, I’d save the '97 for another 1-3 days. Younger wines, like younger people, like to get agitated, so if this were a younger bottle, I’d frankly pop it into a decanter and let it rest there for about …oh, 3 minutes.

Dennis_Atick · January 28, 2009, 9:53pm

I agree with Eric.
I always give older stuff at least 48 hours to settle before popping. Bouncing around a UPS truck/plane/train/little brown wagon for a few days just can’t help. No science, just my .02.
I’m sure others do it all the time with no issue, there’s always exceptions.
I’d wait.

Gordon_Fitz · January 28, 2009, 10:30pm

Bottling Shock most definitely exists! It can last from 30-180 days after the wine is bottled. Most good wineries will not ship wine during this period. They will taste their wines and ensure bolttling shock is past before release. However, many phlonk wineries along with those in a cash crunch will ship wine shortly after bottling. My recommendation is to hold any bottle released from a winery at least six months after bottling date before opening.

I typically give all wines 30-60 days min. of rest after receipt before opening. Both young and old. This takes care of travel shock.

Steve_Saxon · January 28, 2009, 10:31pm

Thanks old fart, but who the f#ck are you?

Loren_Sonkin · January 28, 2009, 10:43pm

Always a controversial topic. Let me ask you this, do you think wines are living things? Let me ask another question, when you travel, upon arrival are you tired and need a nap or are you ready to go?

My guess is the answer is yes, and it depends on lots of factors. So it is with wine, at least thats my view. Unfortunately, you just never know, so I like to play it safe and let the bottes rest if I can. Sometimes its not possible.

Steve_Saxon · January 28, 2009, 10:55pm

Interesting observations and normally I wouldn’t be to worried if it were a younger wine so I’ll probably leave it standing up until next week and in the meantime drink a Carlisle Syrah. It’s not like I don’t have a lot of it.

Glenn_L_e_v_i_n_e · January 28, 2009, 11:27pm

word

Terry_H_a_r_r_i_s · January 29, 2009, 2:25am

Happens to me every time I leave home. Worse for those I encounter, I suspect.

Jeff_Pf0h1 · January 29, 2009, 3:04am

Travel shock.

Yes it exists.

Chemical kinetics can be altered with temperature, pressure and motion (vibration). You can slow some and speed others depending on which variables you play with. Some are REVERSIBLE, and some are not.
(temperature is generally not reversible)

High frequency vibrations, as they exist in transit (cars, planes) do push some reversible chemical reactions faster and stop others completely. Luckily, unless you subject wine to high frequency vibrations for days, the newly made chemical compounds resulting from the high frequency vibrations are not stable and will revert back to their pre-ship state (almost). Older wines suffer more than younger and need more time to recover and don’t recover as completely (fewer active chemical compounds). A few hours is about the amount of time needed to induce travel shock. A drive across town will not do it to a noticeable (taste/smell) effect. FedEx easily, even a cross country trip via air.

LOW frequency, like hiking with wine in your backpack, does not induce such reactions. Well it does but you would need low frequency for WEEKS, some believe months. (cognacs shipped around the world for instance, but they also expose those to temp swings so…)

One test that me and some friends did was ship some bottles, and handcarry others from France. Identical bottles from the winery. We’re talking cases to remove any bottle variation. Noticeable differences in taste/smell existed when they were all back in the USA. We ran some GC/MS because we’re geeks and saw measurable chemical differences. But after 6 months all the wines became chemically similar again (within our measurement abilities and statistics) with GC/MS.

Tony_V_e_l_e_b_i_l · January 29, 2009, 4:29am

I’ll take a slightly contrary view…here’s my take from flying with wine, shipping wine, bottling wine, etc.

Travel shock exists - for MORE DELICATE/OLDER WINE where sediment gets shook up.

Travel Shock doesn’t exist - for younger/richer wines.

Bottle shock - which I think gets confused with travel shock definitely exists. For the first 6 months or so after a wine is bottled, that wine goes through a particular up/down phase. You could open 6 bottles on the same day and get 6 different results but the farther out you get from bottling, the more the variation smooths out. Of course the farther you get in years the variation increases again…

Long way of saying, when you recieve your mailing list wine, try to figure out when the wine was bottled. If it was 6 months or less, try to let them settle for a few months. 6 months or more, your probably okay with a little decant time - of course bottle depending!

Jeff_Pf0h1 · January 29, 2009, 6:13am

I’m curious how they got approved without a proper real name logon.

Jeff_Pf0h1 · January 29, 2009, 6:16am

By chance do you do a GC/MS?? That would confirm if the chemical components changed.

Some will tell you based on their home storage (i.e. their take from their own "cellar) that temp doesnt matter and they’ve never had a heat damaged bottle. But I think we know that isn’t true. “my take” vs. my degrees in chemistry (how do chemical reactions occur and what are the factors in kinetics of reaction) and my GC/MS evaluation are what I’m relying on here.

I GUARANTEE I can change your wine by subjecting it to high frequency vibrations. Why? Because some chemical reactions proceed much faster when this happens. See a lot of chemistry labs that agitate their flasks on an ongoing basis? (pull up any web site based on drug discovery or the chemical industry and you’ll see those devices in use) They do that to speed along the reaction. I GUARANTEE I can change your wine by subjecting it to high/low temps. Why? Chemical reactions are generally temperature dependent. And wine is a mix of active chemicals (otherwise we wouldn’t taste or smell)

We aren’t talking about mixing sediment, which isn’t shock, it is just mixing. I don’t shock flour when I mix it with eggs and milk for instance. Shock is chemically changing the wine, for a while or permanently, based on subjecting it to some physical stressors.

Terence_T-Bone_Livingston · January 29, 2009, 6:30am

I think it’s the drinker who is in the shock mode…not the wine.

I’m drinking an '07 PN bottled last Friday, and it tastes like right out of the barrel. Now…come a month or two from now, it may go hide somewhere, like many cyclical wines morphing into the next stage.

Life baby…we’re all growing, and getting a good shock every now and again.

Oh…and this '07 Pinot is opening up like nobody’s business! Man, do I love wine.

davidandrose · January 29, 2009, 2:42pm

Will always (well, almost) allow a newly-bottled wine that arrives at home to rest for several weeks or months prior to infanticide. Have taken wine as checked baggage around the globe and noticed nothing beyond wines that often display bottle variation that I’d attribute to travel-shock, though the wines I have are generally no older than 15 years, and most much younger.

Tony_V_e_l_e_b_i_l · January 29, 2009, 2:57pm

J Pohl - no I haven’t done any GC/MS testing on the wines. However, I do know someone in Dallas with a terrific cellar who claims he owns no corked wines in said cellar. When asked how he knows that seeing as he hasn’t opened every wine in said cellar - “well, because I bought them straight from the retailer or the winery”…okay.

That being said, my analysis is not scientific but for 3+ years I worked in the wine biz…I traveled with wine, I drank lots of wine right after bottling, I attended wine dinners with older bottles.

So my thoughts are based upon my experience. Older wines don’t travel well. They benefit from being stood up in the cellar for a week or so before drinking to let the “sludge” settle.

new wines are fine they just go through a funky period after bottling as stated above.

Gordon_Fitz · January 29, 2009, 5:14pm

T-Bone;

Your experience with a recently bottled wine is certainly the exception. I also take it that you work at the winery bottling the wine to be able to state that the week old bottled wine tastes just like the wine in barrel.

Of course, the other option exists that the wine was crap before bottling and it still tastes like crap. So what’s the difference.