We live in a state that is very warm during 4 months of the year. It is also known for not have too many sweet local wines. We love sweet Rieslings. For those wineries that can send to our home, I'm afraid the wine will be damaged during shipping. Should I be concerned about airline flight elevation change and heat during the shipment process? Sorry, moving is not an option...!
Answer From Expert Roger Bohmrich MW
There is certainly good reason to be attentive to the many hazards which might arise when shipping wine. Let me say first that the ideal location to drink a wine is at the winery, where it has presumably never experienced any of these challenges! We are mostly unaware when we buy wines produced in another state or country how many threats the wine has already survived during land or ocean travel, and particularly on the delivery truck from the wholesaler to our favorite store. As with storage, by far the greatest concern revolves around temperature, because low and high extremes can certainly be damaging to wine even over periods of hours. My own experience in the trade and as a consumer has taught me to be more focused on very high temperatures, as I have drunk wines held in near-freezing conditions and have not been able to detect any negative results (admittedly not under controlled conditions!). But let me address your specific and very interesting aspect of the issue: shipping wine by air. As passengers, many wine lovers in the pre-9/11 world often carried wine on board, and the wine travelled in the same pressurized cabin and temperatures as the human occupants. I never noticed any harmful consequences. Now, wine has to be checked as baggage, and it is my understanding the cargo hold is similarly pressurized but the temperature is allowed to drop quite low at cruising altitude, but not to freezing or below. I would guess that young wines such as a recent vintage of a sweet Riesling would not suffer from this handling (not so with very old, fragile ones). When it comes to ordering wine to be shipped to you from a distant winery, you can request air shipping at considerable extra expense. If you do, once more there is a justifiable concern about the handling at either end; namely, on a non-refrigerated truck, which may transport your package for hours in hot weather. Of course, the same issue arises with standard shipping, with an even greater worry given the length of travel. In the end, your best options are to buy at the winery and carry and check the wines (in a protected shipping carton) as baggage, or to ship only during cool seasons - not just in your locale but all along a likely truck route to your door. Whatever approach you follow, shared wisdom suggests it's a good idea to allow the wine to rest for a week or two to recover from the trip.
