Travel Shock ??

One thing I've noticed is that some wines don't travel very well. After arriving at their destination they may need a few days to a week to recover. I've noticed this on a few occasions. A few years ago I drove about 300 miles with a few cases of my home made wine in the back of my pickup to MOCOOL. I drove on a Friday (the picnic was Saturday) and when I arrived at the motel where several MOCOOLers were staying, they were having a blind Riesling tasting by the pool, so I grabbed a bottle of my home made to add to the mix. When I tasted what ended up being mine it was horrible and stinky and I was ashamed that I had made it. I stuck the cork back in the bottle and put it in the mini-fridge in the motel room. The next morning I tried it again and it was as good as it was before I left home. A similar thing happened last week, also with Riesling. I took several bottles with me in my checked luggage to the West coast for my granddaughter's first birthday. I flew out on Wednesday and drove from Tacoma, WA to McMinneville, OR on Friday to meet with Chef and Linda Lindsay. When I opened a bottle of my 2009 Riesling there it smelled of SO2 and seemed unbalanced. However, 2 days later, I opened another bottle of the same wine at another winemaker's home and it was fine. Has anyone else noticed this phenomena? Is it just Riesling or do things like this happen to other wines?

One wine club used to include warnings that the wine would be "bottle shocked" right after delivery so it's best to wait a few days for it to settle down.

In our experience it is real. We don't even open a bottle we just brought home from the store until the next day at the earliest. Cross country we give 10 days, with fewer days for shorter distances.

Not sure exactly why it happens. Of course, everybody has theories.

But there's no doubt it can happen.

I just make a habit of never opening anything that's just arrived. I give it at least a few days. There's nothing I'll order that has to be consumed immediately upon arrival.

And these days, I order very little, preferring to shop locally for almost everything. So it's rarely a problem for me.

An interesting debate, some claiming that travel shock does not occur, some (including myself) quite certain that it can and does happen. My own hypothesis - travel shock is most likely to occur (in reverse order) from:

Travel by sea
Travel by air for more than eight hours
Travel by air for anywhere from two-eight hours
Travel by automobile exceeding 250 miles (400 kilometers)
Travel by automobile between 125-250 miles (200-400 kilometers)

Best
Rogov

Ah, one of the great debates. I'm an agnostic who leans towards believing, but in any case it's generally just easier to let them rest. If travel shock doesn't exist, I didn't lose anything. If it does, maybe a save.

Just to be pedantic, travel shock (which creates lots of debate) is different from bottle shock (which is pretty universally accepted). Bottle shock is the dumbness just after bottling (and dosing with sulphur).

Here’s a nice article written by Donald A Dibbern Jr.
http://www.wineloverspage.com/dibbern/shock07.phtml

Salute

Victor - Thanks for that link. Interesting article. Regarding my wine from last week, I'm not sure if the "travel" part of the shock was in the airplane - the airline did manage to break one bottle of 17 on the trip there and 1 in 8 on the way home - or the drive to OR, or a combination.

Hope it wasn’t one of Hammered’s bottles!!! What kind of pressure and temperature do they maintain in the luggage compartment a commercial airline? It could very well be a combination of both.

Salute

I'm also in the camp that believes in bottle shock just from general experience.

On the ocassions I have had "unbalanced" champagnes, it seems it has nearly always been when I've popped a NV bottle within a few days after having arrived fresh to the doorstep. I now know better and just take cellared bottles for current consumption. That's the fun of cellaring champagnes anyway - the delight in always being able to take oldest owned bottles first, or close to it, while always keeping the "revolving door" concept going.

But I have broken this concept before by drinking newly bought bottles and it always seems to be less reliable in enjoyment. I know champagne can have a tendency to be sensitive anyways but I'm definitely a believer in uncorking rested bottles if possible, whether it's all just in my head or not.

Jeff

Hope it wasn’t one of Hammered’s bottles!!! What kind of pressure and temperature do they maintain in the luggage compartment a commercial airline? It could very well be a combination of both.

Salute

No - Hammered's wines all made it through. The one that broke was a 2006 Kiona Lemberger ($10). I was anxious to try this wine as it's been touted by several folks (Jenise) as being a good example of the wine and I'm making it now (2009) for the first time. I wanted it for comparison purposes, but I should have a replacement by next week. I don't know about pressure in the airplanes, but the wine was chilled when I got it home.

Interesting. I too like to let wine settle after travel

but

For wine shows and competitions wines are shipped sometimes halfway around the world immediately prior to the event.

I bring bottles down to Brazil (a nine hour flight) all the time and have never regretted opening one immediately.

Other than sediment getting unsettled and then settling again, I have a hard time accepting that a chemical reaction provoked or accelerated by movement can later be undone by rest.

The article in the above link suggests that, other than sediment, "lots of pigments, tannins, and other phenolics, as well as pectins and other polysaccharides, (are) suspended in wine and (are) susceptible to a good shaking on the bed of a delivery truck." Well, if vibration leads to a more homogeneous distribution of all these particles, this could lead to the (absurd) conclusion that wine is most true to itself and should be drunk right after travel, before the solution becomes uneven again.

Sigh, there's so much we don't understand...

I was once told by the travelling salesman of a fine Burgundian négociant that the bottles with which he travelled were fine for demonstration purposes straight after arrival but then required several weeks/months to recover.

One personal experience of my own, which is too small to be statistically significant, goes in the same direction. I took two of my best 30+ year bottles by train to London for an offline and they tasted wonderful the same evening.

To travel shock and bottle shock I'd add "tasting shock". More than once, a terrific wine we had at home turned out ho-hum or worse when brought to a tasting (a very short distance). We have learned not to tout even a favorite-most wine at a tasting because you never know how it will show. It doesn't seem to matter much either which position it is in. Perhaps it's performance anxiety.

Oswaldo that only might be true with a heterogeneous mixture. If you take a mixture of oil and water and shake it vigorously eventually you’ll get “little” beads of water and oil (more of a homogeneous mixture). If you let this mixture “rest” eventually the “little” beads of water and oil might “find” themselves (hence the mixture will become a “true” oil and water mixture). Wine itself is a homogeneous solution from the start (where components A and B are evenly distributed in the solution from the start). Could vibrations (temperature and pressure) cause A and B components to “seek out” one another and thus become more of a heterogeneous solution?

Salute

Several misconceptions here, the following being "my take" on the matter:

(a) Whatever changes that might be caused by travel are not chemical in nature but physical. That is why "rest" can help. Considering that nearly all wines are shipped, If the changes were chemical we and our wines would be in deep trouble.

(b) On nearly all passenger flights the cargo section is maintained at precisely the same atmospheric temperature as the cabin (perhaps a variance of 1 - 2% but that insignificant).

(c) The temperature in the cargo section of passenger flights is invariably maintained at between 35-70 degrees Fahrenheit.That will cause no permanent harm even on a round-the-world flight.

(d) The problem that is caused comes not from the transportation itself but from the amount of vibration. That is no more true on turbulent flights than on regular, the vibration being a normal function of airplanes, ships and land vehicles

(e) With regard to sediment dispersal, that is more noticeable with older wines that have a good deal of sediment. Drinking such wines immediately after the flight or trip is not desirable as one will actuallly wind up with bits of sediment on the tongue. Some do not mind that. Most do.

(f) One of the few things that travel shock and bottle shock share in common with regard to young wines is that neither will be felt immediately after bottling or travel. It takes some time until the impact is felt. In the case of travel shock for young wines that will be felt most strongly starting 24-36 hours after the trip and can then last for up to ten days.

Best
Rogov

Oswaldo that only might be true with a heterogeneous mixture. If you take a mixture of oil and water and shake it vigorously eventually you’ll get “little” beads of water and oil (more of a homogeneous mixture). If you let this mixture “rest” eventually the “little” beads of water and oil might “find” themselves (hence the mixture will become a “true” oil and water mixture). Wine itself is a homogeneous solution from the start (where components A and B are evenly distributed in the solution from the start). Could vibrations (temperature and pressure) cause A and B components to “seek out” one another and thus become more of a heterogeneous solution?

Salute

Interesting point. I'm used to thinking of shaking/vibration as a way to homogenize, but if it has the opposite effect on some kinds of solution, that would be only for a certain amount of time, and might very well explain things.

But one thing seems for sure: travel will accelerate or bring about, even if only minutely, irreversible changes that would not have happened had the bottle remained in the winery. Parsing the reversible from the irreversible is part of the difficulty in understanding travel shock.

I'm more of a believer in TS after an ocean voyage, too many smart importers have claimed it to not pay attention. I'm less certain re a trip on a plane, or a truck. That's for young wines, I really believe in letting older wines sit for a couple weeks.

This is all interesting. I think Rogov's point about the travel shock being a physical issue rather than a chemical one is what I was thinking as well.

I also wonder, in my case (no pun intended), if this "bottle shock" isn't even more susceptible to something like champagne just because of its "layered cuvee" makeup? In other words, while the wine itself, chemically, has no reason to change just from travel disturbance, is it still possible that the physical and delicate intertwining of the (often) multiple blended cuvees can be temporarily "unblended" from travel vibrations?

On one hand this seems a bit unlikely to me yet, on the other hand, that is the impression I get a lot of times when I drink a champagne "on the spot" after purchase or travel - that whatever numerous blending and separate cuvees went into the bottle seem "physically unconnected" at the moment. Yet, if I cellar it, it resumes its integration within itself.

Or is that just simply bottle age doing its thing? It's definitely interesting anyways...

Jeff

It is my understanding that travel shock and bottle shock are two different things. Travel shock is what this thread is about. Bottle shock is when the wine is just bottled and there are odd smells/tastes. But these personal opinions in this thread are just that. Please point me to studies about travel shock. I believe each of your observations could be attributed to bottle variation as well as "travel shock". I am only concerned about travel shock with an older bottle with significant sediment.

Harry, Hi.....


Indeed no-one argues about the existence of bottle shock. As stated earlier, however, the issue of "travel shock" is somewhat controversial, some adhering to the possibility, others not. As to studies, none that I know of on either bottle or travel shock that stand up to the requirements of rigid research.

Best
Rogov

We need a panel to prove or disproove this.

Take a half dozen bottles. Decant each bottle into half bottles and cork them. Half stay home, half go into temperature controlled boxes and get handed to a driver who is told to go and drive 200 miles, turn around and come back.

They all get tasted blind. Report back.

Bill, Hi.....

The decanting itself would have an impact on the outcome. And, if one is truly going to "do it" we should arrange for a round-trip transcontinental flight for at least three bottles, one to opened with a wine that was not shipped immediately after return; the other to be tasted in the same way 3 - 5 days later; and the other 7-10 days later.

Make you a deal - you pay the flight and delivery bills and I'll supply the wines.

Best
Rogov