Do you bring older bottles of wine with you while traveling? How does it work out regarding sediment? Do you travel with exclusively younger bottles (< 5 years), avoid certain grape varieties with particularly fine sediment (nebbiolo/pinot), or not overthink it?
I am taking a road trip next week (~8 hour drive). I would like to bring an older bottle (e.g., 20 years) with me… e.g., Barolo or Cote Rotie. The said bottles have been standing up for 2 months now. If I bring them, I imagine there would be a fair amount of aggressive jostling along the way (while endeavouring to keep them upright), plus 8 hours of road vibration; after arrival, I can give ~2 days rest before opening it. Do you think it would be a mistake to bring either/both bottle?
ive often wondered if anyone has a good :“centrifuge” strategy for situations like this. when I imagine it, I picture strapping a wine into a blanket or pillowcase and giving it a good whirl.
I have wondered as well! Nearly started a thread on this before. You can get the last bit of ketchup out by whirling it around. In my head, I have visualized some contraption they may have used in the 1800s to lay the bottle horizontally in an iron contraption that spins the bottle around.
I use coffee filters at home, which I think are finer than your steel mesh (not sure). But I find they don’t do a great job with nebbiolo or pinot sediment, which seems finer and slips through.
I travel with older bottles. Often on airplanes where I’m not around to obsessively keep them upright. So I try to plan for some less sediment-y bottles the first night or two and give the more finicky bottles 3 or 4 days upright. If I was going for a 2 day trip I’d probably just not bring older Barolo.
According to 30 seconds of Googling, coffee filters allow particles from 10-20 microns through. 300 mesh, as I linked, is around 40 microns which is roughly the threshold of human visual detection. Other than keeping a bottle perfectly vertical and pouring off slowly and hoping to get as many sediment-free glasses as possible, pouring through 300 mesh is going to be just as effective as decanting by eye sight over a candle… So while some sediment particles may slip through, it’s not as if decanting by any other method I’m aware of will actually separate them reliably without wasting lots of wine.
Ship the wine to your destination two weeks ahead of time with a “This side up” instruction on the box for whoever receives it. Then it will be settled in time for your arrival.
Calling all chemists. I have joked for years that someone needs something that could be injected through the cork and settle to the bottom and polymerize and trap the sediment in an old bottle.
If the wine is turbid it will taste different. It doesn’t matter what you filter out. I guess it would vary by individual wine, but I think I’d be ok with traveling with the wines under those conditions.
i’ve taken 5 hour car trips (from SEattle to Walla Walla) frequently with older Barolo, Rhone, Burgundy, Bordeaux, and have had no problems. These trips are on smooth roads, 95% of it on Freeways. I put the wine upright and try to get it between front and rear axles (Not in the extreme back of your station wagon). With today’s suspensions, here is some vibration but not a huge amount of jostling. If you are back roading, then there might be more of a problem.
air travel is more difficult, as the wine will likely be jostled, or tip on it’s side, or even upside down.
I have had very bad luck with rhone and barolo wines traveling from Los Angeles to my house in Sonoma. Filters still leave the wine changed, tubed, off. Pinot seems fine
The difference between a 62 Cadillac and my Toyota RAV4 when it comes to wine sediment is like the difference between gently swirling in a Riedel Burgundy somm stem and putting the bottle in a paint mixer.
