The most bizarre places/times people etc where you have bought wine.

I have been doing this a long time, and was asked the question a few days ago. Some of the answers made me smile as i recalled them.


A few of the more memorable ones:

A bottle of 1962 Romanee Conti on a wall in restaurant in the heat in Florence that had been there for 30+ years, which I bought for a $100, and yes it had turned.

Finding an incredible list at a country club near Williamsburg, and being allowed to buy wines off that list. They filled two cars as it was worth hiring a second car to bring all the wines back to NY.

Being asked by a close friend, a lawyer, to assess and buy the wines of the widow of his senior partner. She turned out to be one of the most foul people I have ever met, and after threatening to walk out (actually it wasn’t a threat, I really wanted to go, and stayed as a favor to my friend) I bought three bottles, each turning out as vile as she was.

Buying the contents of a cellar in Connecticut. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a large Mercedes comes screeching to a halt and the wife and her attorney get out of the car stopping the sale. Lots of shouting and screaming. And it was several years before I was able to find another bottle of Trotanoy 1961.

Buying Champagne from a mom and Pop store owned by Koreans. They had the most fantastic collection of Krugs, Salon old DP etc, and although they barely spoke English, we just loved the experience. We ended sitting in the store for a couple of hours drinking with them, and the drunker we got, the better we communicated.

The semi annual pillages to Boston, DC etc. When I was young and naive, we shared a large van and headed to different places, where we bought wine. We saved for months for these trips, and got some incredible buys, and occasionally, we would open a bottle in the parking lot, sample the wine, and if it was good, go back and buy the rest.

96 La Tache with my husband present at a wine and liquor store on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.
They had tons of cheap wine cooler drinks and beer up front and a small refrgerated walk in wine room in the back.

That’s an awfully lot of time spent buying wine. Don’t you have a day job?

Stopped at this mom and pop liquor store in the LA/OC area. I saw 6 bottles of 1996 Dom Perignon standing on the shelves - probably been there for some years. Funny thing is, they have a bunch of coolers where they store beer, cheap wine, etc. yet neglected to put the Doms in there. I mentioned to the owner of the store that he probably should have put them in the cooler as it’s a better environment than a store shelf. Anyways, I left and told a friend about it who lived in Chino about the 6 bottles. Few hours later, he drove down and bought them all. And when he bought them, the owner had put them all into the cooler.

Few weeks later, he opened a bottle . . . wasn’t great, but wasn’t terrible either.

I walked into a small wine shop in the back of Camperdown, Sydney Australia in 2001
They had the usual selection of $15-25 bottles, the guy behind the counter mentioned they had a few more bottles “out the back”, so I squeezed between some stacked cases and found a small area with some better wines in it (mostly Aussie stuff), they had a bottle of 85 DRC Richebourg in the cabinet with a very very faded price tag on it, the price looked like $150.00 to me which I was sure was missing a zero.
So I went back to the counter and asked the staff about the bottle (trying not to look to interested), He confirmed the price at $150… and then offered to discount it to $120 for me if I was interested.
I was interested

Several years ago, at what was basically a beer and liquor store, I spotted an assorted case of 1982 DRC. Each bottle was marked at $79.95. OK - I’ll take the Romanee Conti and the couple bottles of La Tache please. All have long since been drunk and all were good but the RC was excellent.

I met Lenny Dykstra several years ago and he was selling his cellar in Philly. I asked what he had and all he knew was the 1937 Yquem which he had purchased from La Tour d’Argent in Paris. OK how many bottles do you have? About 100? How much for your cellar? $5,000? I decided to take a chance, but I had to go back to Philly to get it at his house. A red eye flight and then a van with shipping containers was meeting me at the airport. I got to his beautiful house and went down into the cellar. The first bottle I pulled out was Freixenet! Uh-oh. But the next bottle was 85 Cristal Rose; okay then. And it continued like that throughout the 100 bottles. $10 wines followed by two bottles of 1961 Gaja Barbaresco, then more $10 wine and a 1988 Dom Perignon. I took home about 80 bottles and left the supermarket wines. I had the 37 Yquem a few years ago and it was magical. You never know…

in 2002 I stopped at a wine and beer shop between Bondi and Double bay in Sydney to have a look around, I was looking at his Rhone selection (which was pretty average) and the owner asked me if I liked French wine, I said" yes sir I do".
He took me down stairs and had about five cases on a trestle table ( I am guessing he bought them from a local widow who didnt drink), a complete mixed case of 83 DRC, 2 bottles of 78 DRC RSV, 2 bottles of 78 DRC LT, 3 bottles of 82 Conseillante, 3 bottles of 82 Lynch bages, 2 bottles of 82 Ducru, 16 bottles of 85 La Chapelle, 6 bottles of 85 Thalabert, 6 bottles of Jaboulet St Jo and a few other random bottles.
I asked him how much he wanted for the wines individually and he told me he would only sell everything together and it had to be cash, and I had to make an offer for the lot.
I excused myself and drove to the bank to withdraw some cash.
When I returned I offered him $2000 for all the wine (figured I would start at a really silly price to get his bottom dollar), he took a fraction of a second too long to refuse my offer so I came back at $2200 which he accepted.
Best day ever

you win.

Thanks Alan,
we drank like robber kings for quite a while after that day.

Wally’s is a liquor store in Orlando, a dive bar really. The kind of place you know big daddy Doc Levine would hang at. It was the place to be for decades. Started in the '50s. Cheap booze, super tall drinks mostly alcohol, neked lady wallpaper. It was a total throw-back, we all loved it. All associate initiations happened here for my firm, bachelor parties, going away parties, you name it. I showed up early one night before the crowd, and for the first time, noticed a wine fridge. Like a big one. It was locked. Asked to check it out, and it turns out, Wally’s was a French wine connoseur. It was loaded with mature bottles of Classified Growth. I could only afford a few back then, but got 1986, 1989 bottles of Lynch Bages, Pichon Baron and Montrose and prices below what was then the current release price (this was around 1996). Wish I had the coin back then to have bought it all. Somehow the word got it, and the fridge got drained pretty quick.

Buying wine and asking for plastic “to go” cups at a liquor store in the ‘hood in Denver and having the owner sell us red Solo cups for 5 cents each so we could toast our friends’ under construction infill project, also in the hood. $9 was the high end stuff.

running into my local wine guy at the check out counter of our local supermarket,Hey Dana, I said, If I buy a case of Tiefenbrunner Pinot Grigio, can you give me case of Dominus 87 at $30/bottle, sure says he…My wife and the cashier thought I was kinda weird…This was around 1990 or so…Finished the last of the Dominus last year and Dana is still my local wine guy, most recent purchase about 2 weeks ago, loaded up on some white wines.

Ill add one tomorrow…but in the meantime just wanted to say this is an awesome thread. Keep the stories coming!

I had a couple situations locally here in NJ. A few years ago now a poster listed some wines for sale on the WS forum with no history. I actually replied to the offer and wanted to inspect the wines. Went to inspect and this was in a pawn shop. Ended up with a 1965 Haut Brion, a 1970 Ducru, and a couple other no names for around $100.

Next one was a guy in town that worked in antiques, went over to visit and he had a mixed case or early 1970’s Bordeaux, picked up a 1970 Latour, a couple Montrose, Gruaud Larose, and Pichon Lalande. Have opened a few and are in perfect condition. All in <$200.

Paging Mark B!

I love these stories. I scored a few old bottles at a small town convenience store/liquor shop a few years back. All the Champagnes were ruined, but the reds were/continue to be fantastic. Immediately took a bottle of early 90s Grange to a party at a Berserker’s house where we stashed it in the basement as a side bottle [cheers.gif]

No sh_t, right. His stories even had pictures.

1968 Heitz Martha’s at the Mustang Ranch in 1977, and that’s all I am going to say about that.

In the early '80s, while rummaging around the unsaleable pile at my friend’s family wine distributorship, I happened upon near 40 bottles of '79 Chateau Lafleur with wine-stained labels. Either the pallet broke or, more likely, dropped by the lift truck operator, smashing a bunch of bottles and ruining the labels on many bottles that weren’t broken. I bought all of the remaining bottles for $12 each. They were delicious.

A couple was divorcing and owned a B&B about 20 miles out of town, she was selling off all of the wine for $10 each. Most were five to ten years old. We went to check it out and took home four cases, none of it was spectacular but we were in the early stages of our collecting so it was a nice addition regardless. It was different from what we had been drinking since some bottles had some age on them. They are all gone now. My wife sometimes says she wishes we had bought it all, not sure about that.