FoodBanter.com - testing the cold weather

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testing the cold weather

Greetings all,
I know there has been talk about shipping wine during the cold months
of the year. I live in Vermont, and it gets pretty cold! I have had wine
shipped here over the last month or so without any problems. Recently I
ordered wine from a retailer in D.C. They will not ship to me right now
because it is too cold. I asked for them to go ahead anyway, but they
still will not unless I sign a "release form." I decided to do a
little experiment. I have two bottles in my (unheated and not so well
insulated) garage. I feel that this is equivalent to either being in a
shipping wharehouse and/or a shipping vehicle, such as UPS or FedEx. One
bottle (Potelle Zin Paso Robles) is standing as is. The other,
Beaujoulais Nouveau, is in a single styrofoam shipper which is then
packed in a regular cardboard shipping box.
The zin has been outside since 6pm Monday night. The BN has been out
since 11pm Monday night. Upon checking at 10am this morning, both were
fine. No sign thus far of freezing. Also, as expected, the BN in the the
shipper, was not as cold to the touch as the zin was.
I will keep them out there another couple of days to see what longer
term exposure at these temperatures will/might do. I believe one more
advatage to wine being shipped, rather than just sat motionless (in my
garage), is that the wine is even less likely to freeze as easy, if at
all, when being moved around. Flowing liquid freezes slower than
motionless liquid.
I am not a trained scientist in any way. This is just a simple test
to see for myself what will/might happen to wine under these condtions.
Any comments/suggestions of course would be appreciated. Also, if you
have tried this before, please share your results.
Thank you for your time and bandwith. I hope this will prove
helpfull to the members here.

Cheers from Vermont!

Eric

testing the cold weather

>>Calvert-Woodley, hmm?

YES

>but why not put the BN as the more >exposed? Personally if only one
wine is >damaged, I'd make damn sure it was the >BN! :)

Ah, have you tried this zin? (The Paso Robles, not their VGS.) I would
rather IT get damaged. :-)

testing the cold weather

>How cold is it in Vermont during these >test days?

Ah, yes. Very BASIC data that I should be writing down! Today, Tuesday,
we hit a high of 34F and the low will be ~23F. It was definately colder
yesterday. I will have to check the weather archive for that. Tommorw
the low will be ~5. Now THAT should be a good test!
Thank you!

testing the cold weather

>Ah, yes. Very BASIC data that I should be writing down! Today, Tuesday,
>we hit a high of 34F and the low will be ~23F. It was definately colder
>yesterday. I will have to check the weather archive for that. Tommorw
>the low will be ~5. Now THAT should be a good test!
>Thank you!

I reported earlier on our cold wave at the beginning of November in Wyoming. My
wine sat in a UPS truck in Casper at minus 9 deg F from 11 PM to the following
morning. Then it sat on the truck all day before it was delivered all evening.
The wine was fine.

It doesn't sound like you are getting temperatures nearly that cold.

Tom Schellberg