Sweat, Lies, and Warm Deliveries

Summer exposes who’s faking it and who’s fighting for it.

Let’s talk about what happens when wine gets hot. Not metaphorically. Not some hot category or breakout region. I mean literally, physically, miserably hot—steaming-in-the-back-of-a-FedEx-truck-in-Tulsa-in-July hot. Because here’s the secret no one wants to talk about: your wine probably isn’t shipped with temperature control. Not to your house. Not to the wine shop. Sometimes, not even to the restaurant charging triple markup and pretending to care.

When that bottle hits 100 degrees, the fruit cooks. The acid warps. The texture goes sideways. But you wouldn’t know. Because the big guys made damn sure you wouldn’t. Welcome to the great summer cover-up.

Mass-market brands know their wine is going to get abused in transit. So they build it to survive. Not with craftsmanship—with chemistry. Stability additives, over-sulfiting, acid corrections, reverse osmosis. Frankenstein shit.

But what happens when the wine isn’t built like that? What happens when someone actually makes something alive—low-intervention, minimal sulfur, real texture, soul? I’ll tell you what happens. It shows. The wine changes. It might go cloudy. It might lose its edge. It might flat-out turn. And that’s okay. This is what is supposed to happen—if the wine is actually good.

Small growers, the ones who still crush grapes with their own hands and bottle on a prayer, get torched every summer. Their honest wines fall apart in the heat, and then what? Refund denied. The importer blames the winemaker. The distributor shrugs. The shopkeeper says, "Sorry, not our problem." And the customer walks away thinking that small producer makes flawed wine. The chain of blame skips over the actual cause—a cooked truck, a baking warehouse, an ignored weather advisory—and lands on the one person who gave a damn.

So the next time a small producer tells you they’re not shipping till Monday, thank them. If a shop says they’re holding your bottles for cooler weather, buy more from them. If the wine arrives a little hazy but still alive? That’s the sign it wasn’t fake to begin with.

Summer exposes everything. Who’s cutting corners. Who’s hiding flaws. Who’s got your back. And who’s just pushing product that doesn’t die in the heat because it was never really alive to begin with.

And what about Bruno? We won’t leave you hanging. Wait and see.

Drink Different. Or Die Bored.

Cheers,
Bruno