Last summer one hundred cases of very fine wine indeed had to be poured straight down San Francisco’s drains. They had been shipped from Arizona for an auction and because the owner knew that they could encounter temperatures of more than 100ºF/38ºC en route, he paid the extra to have the wine shipped in a reefer, a temperature-controlled container. The only trouble was that someone turned the temperature so low over the weekend that the wine froze and started to push out the corks, fatally letting oxygen in. The result was a $100,000 insurance claim.

In 2003 a Hong Kong wine importer also had to claim for an entire container-load of wine, this time from Australia. When it arrived at the warehouse it was, worryingly, warm to the touch. Even an hour later, when a surveyor had arrived, the temperature inside was 93ºF/34ºC and nearly all the bottles had their corks either popped out or bulging from the capsule. The wine had this time expanded due to extreme heat.