How does a wine get ruined at 70 degrees?
Exactly. But for a $200 bottle that I plan to age for 10 years, Iām not willing to take the chance.
We are in a weather hold for all states but recently had a customer buy at the tasting room and wanted the case shipped to a southern state. He didnāt want to wait until fall and signed a waiver to take responsibility for the wine. Our third party shipper uses UPS - they pack and ship cold chain only on Monday. UPS picks up at 3pm and the wine arrived at the customerās home on Tuesday by 10am. Cold packs were still frozen and the wine was cold. It cost $189 to ship one case via cold chain - ouch!
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My personal takeaway from this thread: Iām not buying shipped wine between June and September, Iāll skip third-quarter purchases
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This is not a bad idea.
I think I have just been lucky before. For example, I have another case coming next week, but with this vendor I know that they ship Monday, I have it Wednesday, and the wines will still be cool to touch because they have been handled and packed appropriately. Unlike in this case where they buried them to a warehouse, with the ice packs, for a week before they moved an inch.
Mikko Tuomi you can Joe Fisch if you have a complaint about WineAccessās shipping practices
From your OP it seems like you picked (a key point) a shipping date in August for delivery to Texas for a wine youāre going to age for 10 years. Why the rush? If Wine Access doesnāt offer a hold for fall shipping (and there are very few merchants who donāt in my experience, and I wonāt order from them) than I would have just waited to see if the bottles were still available in the fall. You decided to roll the dice and lost. Did you offer to pay $100s for overnight cold chain delivery like Karen mentioned above? Sounds like you wanted a guarantee in 100F weather that your wine would arrive cold by standard shipping. This is why, as noted above, stores ask for signed waivers. That type of guarantee is risky and expensive even if the company says they can do it. You should chalk this up to a lesson learned. Also, shipping something that starts frozen in styrofoam with ice packs is an apples to oranges comparison to shipping wine that you expect to stay at <70F. Iāve never ordered from Wine Access, but this seems like an unnecessary complaint; all weāve learned is that they donāt do a good job at shipping in summer, which most of us have avoided even with the advent of supposed cold chain shipping.
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I emailed them. Havenāt received a response.
Since they advertise temperature controlled shipping, I assumed I would get temperature controlled shipping.
The key point was that this shipping was messed up by incompetence. Packing it a week before shipping it will never work. If they packed it the day it left the warehouse, we would not be having this discussion.
All my wine is ruined in that case.
Iām in the first time, shame on them camp. but next timeā¦
I get perishables in summer. Most require overnight shipping. Or two day shipping. The difference between that and regular shipping is not spent in a refrigerator somewhere, itās in transit more often than not.
And the perishables come with almost as much ice as product. Not gonna happen with a 48 lb case of wine.
There maybe successful shippers who do what they say. But this is the #1 complaint in the wine collecting world every summer (other seasons itās corks).
Now if one had requested a shipping hold and they didnāt, thatās completely different. Holding it is a reasonable expectation for any enterprise. Not the rare, specialized , extremely competent one.
I hold until November here in SoCal.
Sorry if I missed it while reading the thread, but I donāt see how you know that it was packed a week before shipping. Just because a label was created?
Doesnāt really matter. Key point is that you REQUESTED a wine that you arenāt going to drink for 10 years be shipped in August to Texas. Again, I think a simple email to WA asking that the wine be held until the fall could have avoided having this discussion, especially since you didnāt need the wine immediately nor did you go to the extra effort to ensure cold overnight delivery.
Like I said, Iāve never ordered from Wine Access so I have no skin in this game, but Iāve been on these boards long enough to see one off complaints balloon for no reason, which is why this post bugs me.
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Itās on the second picture on this thread. The label has the date it was packed. The last mile UPS was less than 19 hours. Plenty of time for ice packs to do their job, had they packed it appropriately, and at an appropriate time. It stood in their warehouse for almost a week before it moved an inch. This is my gripe.
I requested what they promise - temperature controlled shipping, which they did not provide.
I live in Northern California. I will only buy wine during the warm months from wineries (who are all smart enough to hold shipments for cool weather, and as far as I can tell most also monitor temperatures on shipping routes), or K&L, who I know from extensive experience will hold the wine until I tell them to ship it.
Fine, but you still roll the dice for every shipment to Texas in the summer, regardless of the vendorās promise. You can keep having wine shipped in 100F heat and complain when it doesnāt work out, or ship only in the fall and spring when the rest of us do for safety and no longer have these complaints. To me it seems like a simple decision.
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My few orders from Wine Access have always shipped immaculately and arrived in pristine condition. That being said, I donāt ship any wine from anywhere in the summer. If itās 90+ outside, itās a lot hotter in the truck, and itās not hard to wait for a few months to get the wine.
This wine would have arrived in pristine condition, had they packed and shipped it appropriately. Packing and storing for almost a week before shipping is not ok.
Shipping in the summer is not ideal, especially for serious wines. I avoid it in most cases. When something does get cooked, Iāll accept that my impatience is to blame, and move it to the front of the drinking list. For porch pounders or kitchen quaffers, typically they are still ok enough to drink. But they wonāt keep.
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It does feel to me, however, that many more retailers are reluctant to Hold Til Ship, than they were in prior eras. Now, even during the peaks of summer heat waves, many still seem insistent on the 4 week hold max etc. I get that they are in the āmoving business, not the storage businessā but it does mean that there is some sliver of lost sales, from customers who would rather not pay the summer expedited upcharge, and were willing to wait til October.
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WA has never given the impression of being a systematically bad actor, and given their sponsorship (?) on WB, I think it would have been fair to see how they would have resolved the issue before going bananas here. OP said there has been āno responseā - is this like over weeks? Letās be reasonable in what kinds of timeliness is expected. I also think important matters are better dealt with a quick phone call, rather than (unanswered) email ping pong. The few orders Iāve had with WA have all been fine, solid wines at fair enough prices, with good service. Iād ask OP if they would be happy with the resolution of getting a refund or whatnot, with the cost of being removed as a customer. If one is getting wine delivered in a tricky state (for wine) maybe one should be thoughtful about ending/risking that relationship (if it was valued). Heck, even if one determined they could not be relied on for summer shippingā¦that still leaves 2/3 of the year where they might still be beneficial as a vendor.
I think this thread is reaching a point of tl;dr, so I will just condense the points I was trying to make:
- Packing wine with ice gel packs a week before it leaves your warehouse in California is asinine.
- Promising temperature controlled delivery, but then not providing it, is what it is.
- Requesting a weather hold could mean I just end up with someone elseās returned cooked wine.
If they had packed the wine the day it left California, we wouldnāt be having this conversation. Thatās the āstupidityā I referred to in the original post.
This.
Man, that is some extreme game theory here (which I think is completely wrong).
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