Shipping wine long distances by Fedex or UPS ground at certain times of the year can be a risky proposition due to hot or cold weather extremes along the way (even with a styrofoam shipper). Nevertheless, wine collectors trying to avoid the higher costs of shipping 3-day or better often try to make some assessment of the delivery route taken by the carrier to decide which service level to choose.

A recent thread on the Mark Squires Wine Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com titled "Some way to figure out UPS ground route?" contains a user post referencing a very cool universal package tracking tool for major carriers (Fedex, UPS, USPS, and DHL/Airborne) that combines Google maps with RSS technology. Every time the package moves and is scanned, you get an instant update to your RSS "reader" or "aggregator" and a new segment is added to a map charting the package's progress towards its destination. While this is unfortunately not a predictive tool, a few experiments during safe times of the year will illustrate the common delivery path taken from your favorite out-of-state online retailers to your door.

P.S. If you don't know what RSS is yet, it's time to find out. Click here for a non-technical explanation and also visit Vinfolio's RSS feeds page to see how we use it to provide instant updates of new wine inventory.