Bottle sickness / shock

[Mark D]

I've recently taken delivery of some very young southern Rhone red. It's very disjointed and acidic. I've contacted the supplier about this who advise to wait a few weeks as it has only been recently bottled. Anyone else have experience of bottle shock?

[Andy Velebil]

While I often joke about this phenomenon, and give people grief about it, I do think it exists in certain ways. Bottling is a very abusive process on wines and I think wines need time to settle after being bottled, somewhere around 4-6 months is a good range.

A day or two in transit from a long car drive or flight, typically 24 hours is enough for it to settle back down, at least for younger wines. Older wines seem to behave like, well, like old people....Sometimes they're cranky for a long time and sometimes they are happy no matter what.

Since your wines are recently bottled, then yes, I'd probably wait a bit to let them settle and then make an evaluation.