A Traveling Experiment...Where Did I Fail???

If you haven't tried them yet, the latest OjaiWhite and the OjaiRed are one screamin' good value at $13/btl. These are all the leftovers of Adam's whites and reds that don't make the cut, then cleaned up a bit & filtered, and put to btl and moved out the door. The latest OjaiRed, which seems to display mostly Syrah character, is easily their best one yet. Alas, there is no way to distinguish one yr's production from the last.
We got our SpringRelease Ojai shipment about a month and a half ago. After I tasted the OjaiRed, I knew we needed to get some more. So ystrday, we get another 3 cases delivered by FedEx in the midst of this searing LosAlamos heat wave...it was pushing 80F in the afternoon.
All of a sudden....the light goes on. I can do a traveling experiment here w/ the OjaiRed that's just off the boat and the one that's been resting quietly here for a month and a half.
So's....I crack open a New btl and an Old btl, pour a glassful of each, randomize the glasses, and sit down to a blind tasting. Invited the hot-chick FedEx driver to join me in this experiment, but she dumurred.

Left: Very/very slightly more volatile/alcoholic nose, but equalizes fast to the right glass; no difference in flavor that I could detect.
Right: Very slightly deeper/more fruit nose but really hard to tell; maybe a slightly bit more soft/lusher/deeper flavor, but hard to tell.

The wines were served several hrs after the new shipment had arrived and the btls set beside each other to come to equal temperature. But the temp was a little warm, in the upper 60F's, so I stuck both btls in the fridge for an hour to take them down into the low 60F's and repeated the blind tasting:

Left: Virtually no difference in nose except maybe, just maybe, a slightly more alcoholic nose; no difference in flavor that I could detect.
Right: Maybe a very/very slight deeper more fruitiness to the nose, but hardly any difference that I could tell; no difference in flavor that I could tell.

In both cases, the samples were:
Left=Fresh off the boat
Right= Rested/stay-at-home btl

Conclusion: We all know that wines suffer from a traveling effect and we are sternly admonished by a multitude of wine experts that we must let our wine shipments rest for a month or two to let them settle down and recover from the rigors of the journey from the WestCoast before we try them. This is a known fact...we've been told that by the experts.
Yet...on these two wines, I struggled for over 30 minutes to detect a difference between the two btls of OjaiRed. There was not a nickle's worth of difference between the traveled and the rested btl. Where did I go wrong in this failed experiment?

1. The OjaiRed is such a robust red that we're not going to see any travel shock in that wine?
2. The FedEx truck with square wheels, crossing the Mojave, was not sufficiently brutal on the journey to inflict travel shock?
3. The OjaiRed recovered from the travel shock within 30 minutes and, therefore, I missed it?
4. I performed this experiment in a waxing, rather than a waning, moon an d Steiner/Joly/Grahm think I should repeat the experiment in several weeks to detect the travel shock?
5. I tasted it from non-Reidel glasses and, therefore, the travel shock was obscurred by the cheapie glasses??
6. I am such a klutz when it comes to tasting wines and wouldn't be able to recognize a travel-shock effect even if'n it whacked me upside the head?
or...gasp...
7. The Emperor/wine-experts wear no clothes...or..at least...only Fruit-Of-The-Looms and the travel shock effect on wines is greatly exaggerated??
Tom

1. The Ojai is a sturdy red.

So, we have a vocal critic of the idea of travel shock, who randomizes two glasses to see if he can tell a difference (knowing one travelled and one did'nt) , and then "decides" he doesn't really tell a difference. Certainly a shining example of the scientific method! We should be proud of our nation's scientists!

I'm an agnostic on the question of travel shock. Some people I respect believe in it (includng producers, retailers, and importers-I think Oliver McCrum here), some don't. Some believers say only with older reds, others say some varieties suffer worst, etc. I have no set opinions. Until someone does some true experiments (double blind to remove observer bias, several different types of wine,with multiple bottles of each wine to eliminate factors such as bottle variation due to TCA or whatever) and shows there is no such thing as bottle shock, I'll personally tend to err on the side of caution. I own a whole lot of wine, why am I in a hurry to open what just arrived? I'm not rigid, I have opened bottles within days of arrival if I need to for say a vertical (some I liked, others I liked less than expected, but can't say it was due to travel shock). This is not the experiment to make me change my ways.

So, we have a vocal critic of the idea of travel shock, who randomizes two glasses to see if he can tell a difference (knowing one travelled and one did'nt) , and then "decides" he doesn't really tell a difference. Certainly a shining example of the scientific method! We should be proud of our nation's scientists!

I'm an agnostic on the question of travel shock. Some people I respect believe in it (includng producers, retailers, and importers-I think Oliver McCrum here), some don't. Some believers say only with older reds, others say some varieties suffer worst, etc. I have no set opinions. Until someone does some true experiments (double blind to remove observer bias, several different types of wine,with multiple bottles of each wine to eliminate factors such as bottle variation due to TCA or whatever) and shows there is no such thing as bottle shock, I'll personally tend to err on the side of caution. I own a whole lot of wine, why am I in a hurry to open what just arrived? I'm not rigid, I have opened bottles within days of arrival if I need to for say a vertical (some I liked, others I liked less than expected, but can't say it was due to travel shock). This is not the experiment to make me change my ways.

Didn't intend to imply that this was a valid scientific experiment, Dale. I figure at least this one data point was better than no data at all and WAG's (complex scientific term we use for "Wild Ass Guess"). I tried mightly to keep an open mind when I was tasting them and felt I was honest enough to change my mind if the evidence showed it. Maybe I couldn't do that.
It's not that I totally dismiss the idea of travel shock. I think there are enough folks who's palate I know & respect (like Oliver's) who believe in it that I can just dismiss the idea. I did a fairly extensive (non-scientific) experiment some 20 yrs ago, inflicting brutal "traveling" on some btls, and was not able to observe a statisticaly significant effect w/ my group. But I've never had a wine, fresh off the boat, that tasted anything like what I'd attribute to travel shock. I don't totally dismiss the idea, I just suspect its effect is overstated by our wine experts.
Tom

[. I don't totally dismiss the idea, I just suspect its effect is overstated by our wine experts.

Sounds like we're closer than I thought. Unsure which experts you are referring to. I do remember one post by RP on other board that posited that some Cab/Merlots might show better, and PN/Nebbiolo worse. But that was one time he was not as sure of his correctness as others.
Then of course there are the self-styled experts -like you and I
Some of them are definitely over the top in their belief in travel shock, but then there are those that think wine is ruined if it spends 4 hours at 72 degrees F, will only buy wines with spinning capsules, etc

there are those that think wine is ruined if it spends 4 hours at 72 degrees F, will only buy wines with spinning capsules, etc

Oh, I forgot my favorite. The guy who stated categorically that if one rinsed a bottle while double-decanting to get rid of sediment, that the wine was hopelessly diluted. I offered to set up a double blind tasting with a fairly serious bet, he never answered.

Sounds like we're closer than I thought. Unsure which experts you are referring to. I do remember one post by RP on other board that posited that some Cab/Merlots might show better, and PN/Nebbiolo worse. But that was one time he was not as sure of his correctness as others.
Then of course there are the self-styled experts -like you and I
Some of them are definitely over the top in their belief in travel shock, but then there are those that think wine is ruined if it spends 4 hours at 72 degrees F, will only buy wines with spinning capsules, etc

Yup...the spinning capsules is one that always brings a chuckle to me.

I think that oftentimes when one has a wine and it doesn't deliver what that person thought it should deliver, they often lean on the crutch
that it was suffering from travel shock...or that it had entered a "dumb phase"...or that it had "shut down" or that it had suffered from
heat damage during transit.......rather then face up to their biases and predjudices and acknowledge that maybe...just maybe.. the wine
just isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I believe Oliver when he says he's done the same experiment I did w/ the OjaiRed and that he's seen a travel shock effect in the wines he's
imported from Italy. When I (hopefully) see him in July, he'll have an example that I can actually taste.
Tom

I believe Oliver when he says he's done the same experiment I did w/ the OjaiRed and that he's seen a travel shock effect in the wines he's imported from Italy. When I (hopefully) see him in July, he'll have an example that I can actually taste.

Except that, I take it, unlike your experiment above, when Oliver says 'off the boat' he means it literally. All the claims I've seen him post here refer only to travel shock that comes from days upon days of undulating movement as ocean freight.

I believe Oliver when he says he's done the same experiment I did w/ the OjaiRed and that he's seen a travel shock effect in the wines he's imported from Italy. When I (hopefully) see him in July, he'll have an example that I can actually taste.

Except that, I take it, unlike your experiment above, when Oliver says 'off the boat' he means it literally. All the claims I've seen him post here refer only to travel shock that comes from days upon days of undulating movement as ocean freight.

Keith,

Thank you for saving me a post. I have no experience of 'UPS shock,' I'm referring to 30 days on a boat.

So, we have a vocal critic of the idea of travel shock, who randomizes two glasses to see if he can tell a difference (knowing one travelled and one did'nt) , and then "decides" he doesn't really tell a difference. Certainly a shining example of the scientific method! We should be proud of our nation's scientists!

I'm an agnostic on the question of travel shock. Some people I respect believe in it (includng producers, retailers, and importers-I think Oliver McCrum here), some don't...

Dale,

I don't think you're going to find any importer who doesn't 'believe' in travel shock, just as you will not find any producer who doesn't believe in bottling shock; it's not a matter of faith. With respect to the astonishing depth of knowlege of some of the non-trade members of this forum, the only person who reliably gets to do this experiment is someone who imports the wine; otherwise how would you know what had been recently shipped? I only have this knowlege because I go over to Italy, taste a wine, and form a mental picture of it; then I ship it, and taste it; then I wait awhile and taste it again.

Again, I have no opinion of a two-day trip in a truck.