I received my case of 2002 Clark Claudon about two weeks ago. I have had negative experiences with wines suffering from what I believe was bottle shock brough on by shipping motion / vibration.

As a rule of thumb, how long do you let your shipped wines sit before you pot a cork? 2 weeks? A month?

I just got a shipment from benchland's winery, and was told 1-2 weeks. Man, it's hard to wait that long!

I've read that it might take a day or so at the most for all the sediments to settle to the bottom. If you drink it right away it might be a little bitter, but otherwise fine.

2 weeks minimum. Has nothing to do with sediment. Let it rest.

PH

I hear what you're saying, mneeley! That Clark Claudon has been staring me in the eyes for two weeks now dying to be drunk (no pun intended).

Sean-

From what I understand, the only reason for waiting isn't necessarily the jostled sediment, but just that the wine (for whatever reason) tastes disjointed and muted....unless that's caused by stirred up sediment??

I thought the concern was with more delicate wines such as PN ?

Sediment is not a factor with most new release wines. I really don't think it's that big a deal.

Tasting "disjointed"? I never noticed, but I also tend to not drink my shipments until after a few weeks anyway, so I wouldn't know if shipping had other strange effects on the wine.

Minimum of a month. Probably less required, but never more.

quote:

Originally posted by PurpleHaze:
2 weeks minimum. Has nothing to do with sediment .

PH

You are correct.

I have often wondered if it is, movement, temperature variance, or pressurization that distrubs the wine. Anyway, I try to wait a month---Although, I'm not always successful

I like to wait 2 months if comes off of a boat. I remember Los Rocas old vine came off a ship and I snatched up 3 cases. I was sooo excited to try it based on the parker review. It sucked. I tried a bottle or two every month just to see if there was something I was missing. on month three- the stuff was awsome, and never had a bad bottle since.

I'm in the wait a month crowd.

I like to place my cases next to a gently babbling brook, place my headphones around the box playing Yanni and occasionally massage each bottle to get it to calm down . . .

I'm not sure of any evidence that travel/shipping affects wine in any way, other than the gospel truth of the anecdotes here. There are changes aftre bottling which can be documented, due to the vacuum/oxygen cut off, but shipping? If anyone knows of empirical studies verifying actual chemical changes, I'd be interested to learn about them. My personal view is that this one ranks up there with the concept of a wine being "ready" to drink. Part myth, part idiosyncratic behavior on the part of people in to wine.

quote:

Originally posted by Ekoostik:
I thought the concern was with more delicate wines such as PN ?

I heard the same thing.

I've tried wines 1-2 days after shipping and then again a month later and can say in those couple of cases, the 2nd bottle was definitely better. Thus I find myself in the month crowd though on rare occasion (case shipments, may need to buy more quick, etc.) I have been known to only wait 2 weeks, but that's unusual.

How long to rest after shipping?

I like to rest for at least an hour after shipping. I prefer to lie in bed with blinders on and doze a little. Others prefer the sofa and some don't rest at all. I just can't imagine not resting after doing all that driving.

I join cdr11 on this (and it has been discussed here before), all the suggestions that wine would need to rest for anything else than sediment-stabilisation seem to be anecdotal.

I also believe that any differences in taste and flavour between a wine that has not rested and one that has, are due to bottle variation (as cork is an imperfect closure), not rest.

Of course, you lose nothing by storing that bottle for a few weeks before opening, so why not do it if you feel unsure, but I believe this is one of those myths of the wine world that will be disproven sooner or later.

quote:

My personal view is that this one ranks up there with the concept of a wine being "ready" to drink.

I don't follow you here, cdr?

Markus,

I am saying that almost everything in wine is a personal preference by each wine drinker - how long to wait after shipping, when is a wine "ready," etc. I guess I should have said that it seems almost every aspect of this curious hobby is purely subjective.

Stay warm, Markus - shouldn't it be getting cold there now?

I agree with the "travel shock" theory, but my own evidence is anecdotal as well. I don't think I'd really want to waste a bottle to test the theory under controled conditions.
My family was camping last summer, and my parents were to come up and join us. I called my father before he left and asked him to bring a bottle of beaujolais that I had left at his house the day before. So he drives up the mountain roads (about 30 miles from his house) and I see the bottle has been bouncing around on the floorboards the whole time. I let it rest as long as I could (about 2-3 hours) and when I opened it, it was extremely disjointed, and what little sediment there was was still dispersed making it seem chewy, tannic, and rough. Quite a disappointment, and not at all like the other bottles I had consumed.

kpak is running an experiment on just this subject and the results will be in in a few weeks. Certainly three bottles of one wine over a few week period is not conclusive, but if several others do this and post their results, we might begin to amass some empirical evidence. It'd be nice if the WS people did a few of these and published results, categorized by varietal, place of origin, and age.

Now that is a good idea Board-O!

Should we try with any specific styles of wines? Most people seem to find its the more delicate wines that need the rest.

Cdr11 - I follow you now, and agree. And your timing is ominously perfect - we just had the first snow yesterday, although the ground is still too warm for it to stick! But this has been an unsually warm fall.

The main obstacle is that people likely won't get enough of a wine that they want to open three bottles in a month. That's not a problem for the WS.