What's too cold for shipping?

Tom, I'd never hesitate to send back any wine sent during extreme conditions that I had not pre-approved the shipping date.

That being said, I worry very little about cold temps. While I try to have the bulk of any wine I order delivered Oct-Nov or April-May, I've had several orders in Dec or Jan, when NY temps were in 20s °F (teens at night).I've never had problems, and the worse I've heard of is tartrate precipitation. While no shipping company I know uses heated carriers, the reality is that for some of the trip your shipment is in a warehouse- not usually heated in sense of a home, but usually at least in 40s for worker comfort. And while the back of a truck isn't heated either, temp is a bit warmer than outside. Assuming the wine is coming in a styrofoam shipper, I'd be surprised if temp of wine went below maybe 30 degrees in most instances. In my NY examples, I'd guess the January wines were about 40-45.

Good luck! Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

I agree with Dale. Worry more about high temperatures. Unless the truck gets stuck overnight in a snow storm, I doubt you have to worry. When the wines arrive, inspect the bottles, especially if any corks/capsules show any sign of bulging up above the rim.

The UPS man just delivered the wine (7 PM MST).They were probably backed up due to the snow. It's pretty cold, but the wine did not freeze.

According to UPS tracking data, the wine arrived in the Casper warehouse last night at 11:30. It was -5 F, and was "checked in" by 3:00 AM. Apparenly, it was on the truck most of the day. Today it got up to 30 F. I'm just glad it's in my possesion.

I guess I am already a little peaved. Last January, they held up shipments when the local temperature was in the 50s, because it was cold in Chicago.Yet they shipped during a March blizzard. My wine arrived the day after the roads opened up. Most roads wehad been closed for two days. Maybe if he looked at a weather reporting station closer than Denver before making shipping decisions, this would not happen.

Tom Schellberg