Wednesday, May 28, 2008
56 Degrees
You may or may not know what a huge fan I am of Moore Brothers Wine Company in Union Square. I am, mostly for their commitment to keeping their bottles at 56 degrees all the way through the shipping and selling process. They point us to a recent article in the Financial Times on why temperature matters. A sample:
But if wine producers are interested in shipping temperatures and conditions, it would seem that some of their customers are, worryingly, less so. I asked Chris Porter of fine wine forwarders Porter & Laker, a subsidiary of the specialist Hillebrand, how common it was for British wine importers to use reefers or any other form of temperature-control such as their special thermo-liners, insulated units or even a thick blanket that can be quite effective and much less expensive than a reefer, which costs about £2,000 for a shipment of around 1,000 cases. He told me it was "surprisingly uncommon" even for fine wines and that his company have only a handful of requests a year for such careful treatment of even the most expensive wines.
