Shipping Madeira in April/May?

[Barry Sunderland]

Outside of the potential of getting a leaker in shipping during warmer weather, should I be concerned to ship during this time with Madeira (the strongest wine on Earth!)?

[Barry Sunderland]

OK...

[Michael T]

I would have responded but I have no idea, sorry.

[Miguel Simoes]

This is prob the time of the year with the smallest weather variability. Would try my best not worry about it. That or you'll always have to buy local...

[Bradley Bogdan]

No.

There, question solved

[Glenn E.]

Outside of the potential of getting a leaker in shipping during warmer weather, should I be concerned to ship during this time with Madeira (the strongest wine on Earth!)?

Consider how Madeira was invented: by Portuguese sailors storing wine for multiple-month long voyages on dinky little (by today's standards) wooden boats that bobbed around in the ocean like corks on a river and baked their contents in the hold or even on deck. Even today it is made by putting it in barrels and then storing the barrels in the rafters/attic.

I don't think that shipping it for a week on smooth (by comparison) asphalt ribbons is going to faze it at all.

[Peter T.]

April is probably a good month to ship wine in the U.S. I think, however, that people are overstating the case a little. Any wine will be affected by high temperatures and I believe that includes madeira- perhaps the most stable of all wines due to extended oxidative aging and fortification. Buy two bottles and put one in a pan with water and heat it to 40C for 30 minutes (summer delivery in the back of a truck could easily top that) and let it cool. I believe there will be a clear difference between the two. Who wants to donate two bottles of 1920 Favilla Vieira Boal? I promise to conduct the test and include results here.

[Roy Hersh]

As long as FED-UPS don't drop the case off the back of the truck, destroying the bottle(s), I can assure you that temprature will have next to no affect on Madeira shipments. Kryptonite won't harm it, and heat or cold won't either unless the short cork is pushed out by freezing. Obviously at this time of the years, that should not be a concern at all.

[Barry Sunderland]

Thanks, gents.

[Eric Ifune]

I'd be more concerned about an old bottling having cork failure somehow than with the temperature. Newer bottlings not so much.
I once did have FEDEX destroy a bottle of the 1905 D'Oliverias Verdelho. It looked like a fork lift ran over the package!

[Peter T.]

That is a remarkably conclusive statement you have made, Roy. Do you have any science to back it up?

Here is a link to a good article on the effects of heat on wine in the bottle:
http://www.wineperspective.com/STORAGE% ... 0AGING.htm

There is, unfortunately, no mention of madeira or even fortifieds in general. I do not claim to have a definitive answer, in part because one would probably need to be trained in chemistry or be an enologist to fully understand these issues. I am, however, of the opinion that such things as turbidity in individual bottles of madeira (that are not the product of agitated lees, which would settle) are evidence that madeira, though extremely stable for a wine, can be affected in the bottle.

I regrettably have to add that I am unable to attend the May tasting. We are moving earth to plant a new vineyard in Uruguay and things have been delayed. The good news is that I am trying hard to include a block of Verdelho, There are some interesting parallels with Madeira- proximity to the sea, low soil pH, similar latitudes and virtually identical degree-day summation (Gladstones method). Total rainfall and soil origin are very different. Check back in ten years.

[Miguel Simoes]

Interesting article. Appreciate the statistical physics underlying principles he uses. His discussion of the effects of temperature makes sense.

[Roy Hersh]

Peter,

It is a known fact that having gone through Canteiro, heat will never hurt Madeira. If it is part of the process to produce it, then how could heat hurt it during a relatively short shipping journey? And if estufagem is used (for less expensive bottlings) that is fairly similar to what takes place during pasteurization, so again, heat is not the enemy of Madeira.

[Peter T.]

Is it a know fact, Roy, or oft-repeated hyperbole? The wine industry is clouded with spurious information (and the gatekeepers, in general, are failing by circulating information without questioning it, but that is different topic). If this is a fact, please put me out of my misery and post a link for the data or study concluding that madeira is completely unaffected by heat when in bottle.

The argument that madeira is rendered completely resistant to heat because it passes through heat in its production is appealing in its symmetry and the ease with which it can be remembered, but the idea that madeira becomes totally resistant to any effects of heat strikes me as an exaggeration and improbable. It would be good to hear from somebody qualified to speak about this. Anybody?

The increased temperature in canteiro production for many wines takes place at the beginning of the chemically complex oxidative aging process. Why, Roy, are the new compounds that are formed during the later periods of barrel aging resistant to heat if they do not face elevated temperatures during their production?

Madeira in decanter or opened bottle eventually looses some of its charm, presumably as a result of slow oxidation of flavor compounds and, admittedly, only after months. Though this process is slow, I think this is strong evidence that the wine is not totally inert. The oxidative aging of madeira with its high fortified alcohol level and low pH make it an exceptionally strong wine. I believe, however, that UV light, vibration, temperature (both high and low) and storage conditions can infrequently create readily apparent problems in individual bottles and in other bottles can cause more subtle organoleptic changes that really would only be noticeable if we were tasting that bottle next to a pristine bottle from the same lot.