What are the perils in transporting old, potentially fragile wine?

WINE TALK
1

Having a debate with some colleagues at the New York Cork Report… Need to find a way to transport an extremely old bottle a distance of about 1800 miles. Assuming the cork is intact, my biggest concern is making sure the cork - which obviously might be more brittle now - isn’t impacted.

But as to the wine itself, is there empirical evidence that transport can affect the wine’s vitality? What has been your experience with moving old bottles?

2

My experience is that transporting them is fine, whether you ship them in a regular styro shipper or hand carry them. I just wouldn’t drink them right after they arrived to give the sediment a chance to settle.

This experience comes from having many older Barolo’s (mid 40’s - 60’s) that were airfreighted over from Italy

3

You can dip the top in hard wax as an extra guard against cork failure/seepage.