The 3 Precautions to Take When Shipping Wine
Great idea, but should you drink that wine immediately after it traveled in the box on a truck?
So you need to take precautions and ask yourself a few things.
1. What are the shipment policies of the store you are ordering from?
You don’t want your wine shipped in the really hot or cold months. If it sits on a truck for too long in either extreme, the wine can ruin.
All your reputable online stores will have temperature policies on their sites so look for them. Otherwise, call or email customer service before you spend a penny.
2. How long was the trip?
Presuming your delivery guy didn’t play Ace-Ventura-soccer with your box of wine, whether you can uncork tonight will really depend on where it’s coming from.
If the online store you order from is in your state, you are probably fine and can drink the wine the day you receive it, say the folks at Gary’s wine. After all, the wines have been resting at the store location and then just have to take a car ride from the warehouse to you. That’s not too taxing. “When we receive wines that have been sitting in distributors’ warehouses for several weeks, if not months, then they are good to go that day,” confirms Joe Campanale, executive beverage director/partner at multiple restaurants in Manhattan, including dell'anima and L'Artusi.
3. What type of wine did you order?
Different grapes have different travel tolerance.
Speaking of Pinot Noir, “it is the Paris Hilton of grapes,” says Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, Master of Wine and partner at winering.com.
It’s high maintenance. It gets airsickness, travel sickness and will need at least a few weeks to recover.
Cabernet and Chardonnay are tougher wines. (Ace Ventura beware.) So may not need as much downtime.
But travel sickness, a.k.a. travel shock is a real thing. (Heck, I get travel shock every I take a vacation with my kids.)
Champagne, especially, needs to be treated like the Queen it is because if the temperature gets too high and it gets warm, the effervescence will basically cause it to explode.
Now just a heads up: Many producers will ask you to let your bottles sit for eight weeks after delivery to ensure perfect quality. That is super-conservative and they generally state that to cover their own toocheses. Again, the consensus is that two weeks should do it.
And lastly, if you happen to open a bottle and find it just doesn’t taste right, even after you let it sit for a few weeks, bring it back to the store, says Simonetti-Bryan. It will help the producer figure out what happened for the future.
So plan ahead. Dinner party on Friday, wine from across the country? Just like you would need at least few days to recoup after that trip, so will your wine.
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