Hot wheels and hot wines

Over the past couple of years, Blowfly has received several emails from customers describing wines that they have received from us that are... to varying degrees somewhat subpar. We recently received notice and a photo of an extremely rare (5 bottles remaining) 2005 petit verdot that was due to be judged in Adelaide which had almost literally blown its top.

This is something we have been agonising over. We go to great lengths (and a fair degree of expense) to store our wines under optimal conditions, especially considering the degree to which the mercury can soar in Australia during summer. Unfortunately, once we hand a carton of wine over to a courier for delivery we essentially lose all control over the treatment of that wine.

After recent consultation with our courier (Fastway), they confirmed that they can in no way assure us that any wine will not be subject to significant exposure to heat during transit. Some individual vans can get quite hot during their pickup runs, and their warehouses can get fairly warm as well as endure further heating from all the hot vehicle engines. This is just a fact of life...

Although Australia is a particularly warm country (or perhaps because of it) Blowfly finds it disheartening that apparently no attempt is made to accommodate such a fragile but important commercial product. Perhaps Blowfly is being overly pedantic. And maybe many Australians don't really appreciate (or care) how much heat can affect wine. Or, given how common it is for wines to be heat affected, maybe they've had no choice but to become accustomed to consuming such wines.

In any case, we don't believe Fastway is alone in having a distribution system that has no protection from excessive heat (although we'd love to hear from any courier that can offer a reasonable solution), For us, though, it is very hard to sell a product to a customer knowing full well that there is a possibility that the item(s) may be compromised en route to them.

So... what do we do?

Firstly... as always, if any of our beloved Blowfly fans encounter any issues with our wines, please contact us—we will replace them. Second, if ordering Blowfly in the summer months we ask a little patience—we will despatch wines at the beginning of the week (to avoid weekend warehousing) and/or on cooler days. Thirdly, we have a plan... it's just taking a little longer than anticipated. A Blowfly '72 lowlight Kombi is being restored and will at some point (yes really, darling...) emerge as a fully fledged, beautiful wine delivery van around the Brisbane environs. We look forward to being able to deliver perfect little bottles of Blowfly to your door in 2016!