My inspiration for this post came from my Mother. Recently, she was in the Okanagan and I had her pick up a few wines for me while I was there. One of them, I immediately drank within a few days.
She looked at me, in complete shock, to learn I had drank a wine so soon after travel. “Aren’t you supposed to let a wine sit after travel? The vibrations are not good for the wine!” Then she followed with, “You’re Uncle Bill says that you should let wine sit for at least a month after travel.”
Now, I can understand that if you are aging a wine, that vibrations to the bottle can likely disrupt the process. However, for ready to drink wines (including the ones I had her purchase for me), do the vibrations or the disruptions from travel really make a difference to the wine? I’m of the philosophy that if the wine is young enough to not have endured much of an aging process to date, that travelling the wine is not going to make much of a difference. I often buy wine off the rack at the wine store and drink it the same day, that wine had to have travelled to the wine store at some point and I doubt they have a back room to let these ready-to-drink wines sit before putting out on the shelf.
Overall, I’m of the philosophy that if a wine is of the “ready to drink” quality and was bottled within the last year, I’m not going to worry about the wine being upset by travel.
