Your wine could be cooked! Green means no, yellow means….

The Wine Ladies discuss a high tech solution out there that keeps track and measures the range in temperature a shipment of wine is exposed to. Click here for the full post.

You’re opening a bottle of your favorite wine. Your waiter’s friend (a corkscrew) retrieves the cork and you pour the wine in anticipation! only what is that aroma? Doesn’t smell like Napa Valley Cabernet. You take a sip from your Riedel Bordeaux glass (also good for California cabs) and immediate disappointment! This wine is cooked! Dammit!

Sound familiar? How does this happen? One of the ways is during shipping in the summer months when the temperatures are too hot for wines to endure. If a wine is exposed to too warm a temp it speeds up the aging process and the flavours are compromised; if the bottles really heat up the wine becomes flat and ends up tasting “cooked”.

Now, there’s a high tech solution out there that keeps track and measures the range in temperature a shipment of wine is exposed to. Temperature-smart wine labels are affixed to the bottles before being packaged and shipped. These sugar pack sized sensors, manufactured by PakSense tell all; if, when and where a case of wine may have exceeded the temperature threshold for your wine to remain healthy. The data, via a portable reader can be downloaded into a computer spreadsheet. When your wine arrives if the label is flashing green, it’s all systems go, if the label is flashing yellow! proceed with caution, your wine could be damaged.

Among those using this technology is WTN Services, a Napa based shipper as well as several California wineries. These savvy labels are enjoying great success according to Chris Edwards, V.P. of WTN, with increasingly more wineries showing an interest. The cost of the labels, $20.00/box may not be worth it for your everyday drinking Zin, but for your prized wines, it may be worth consideration.