There have been numerous discussions in the wine-world about "Travel Shock" impacting the flavor of a wine when it is shipped to you. Many people recommend waiting several weeks after receiving a wine to allow it to recover. Individuals in our group have had similar experiences where wine that they drove to a friend's house (many miles) didn't "taste right" to them, so we decided to run a test to see if we could detect travel shock in a bottle of wine.
We took 2 identical bottles of 2009 Encore wine and exposed one to travel shock and left the other one alone. Prior to the experiment, both bottles had been stored exactly the same. The "Travel Shock" bottle then rode to Lewiston (300 miles) on a paved curvy road. It sat outside for a day in near freezing temperatures (while it's owner fished!), and then was driven a couple more hours and taken inside a warm house where it sat for 2 days. It then drove 270 miles home and was sat upright next to the control-bottle for 66 hours inside a house. Both bottles were opened for an hour and then blind poured to be compared.
Both wines drank just fine and people generally felt they were the same wine. There were some minor differences noted by some for flavor or smell, but nothing consistent or very significant.
Possible Conclusions:
1. Travel shock is not real.
2. 66 hours was enough time to recover from travel shock.
3. The type of wine was not susceptible to travel shock, such as no sediment, not aged, not tannic.
Based on this limited result we think drinking wine that has been shipped is "safe" after 3 days. We may look for other opportunities to try similar experiments in the future.
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