Thanksgiving dinner mishap - 1982 Mouton

Well, this was kind of sucky. I got 3 bottles of 1982 Mouton from HDH auction last week. Opened all 3 this morning to decant for our dinner. All three badly oxidized. Corks were spongy, very soft and completely soaked.

The wine in all 3 bottles had turned slightly brown. It smelled like really damp basement and a bit of roasted sugar aroma.

Tasting all 3 bottles confirmed it all, very flat, no life left in the juice.

Kind of bummed, was hoping to enjoy it with close friends and family. I guess the chances of this happening with older vintages are high, just hoped HDH would’ve vetted the seller better. Not sure how they managed to store and care for all 3 bottles so badly.

Opted to open 2003 Colgin and 2004 Harlan along with 2015 Riverain. All 3 in excellent condition, had also gotten the Colgin and Harlan from HDH couple months ago.

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hopefully they give credit!

Bummer! Glad the backups worked

That will teach you to drink American on Thanksgiving!
Hopefully a credit is coming.
Enjoy!

The auction house may challenge the seller.

Yeah, not sure what their process is. I went specifically with HDH based on their reputation. And I never had anything bad from them.

Same here, glad too! Decanted the backups in the morning and the kitchen smells like berries, so amazing.

I would bet that there will be no credit coming but it is still good to let them know about the consignment.

If you think about it, very few people had active storage in the mid 80s and shipping with active cooling was still a long ways off.

Sorry to hear about your experience. Also a bit surprised you got into them so quickly, but you are obviously a very generous friend

Cheers

-paul

BTW if you ever make it to Detroit I’d be happy to open one with you

Paul, you’re most likely right. Didn’t think all 3 would be bad. But your theory is also not far off, but I’ve heard of people having some very well kept bottles. I think I’m going to try Benchmark next, at least they’re close by and give you 6 month guarantee.

And thank you for the offer, hopefully I will make to Detroit one day and we can open one together.

Sorry to hear about your below par Moutons, that’s an expensive mishap. We had that wine a month ago in a lineup of 82s and it was really singing, right behind the 82 Latour and Petrus.

Alex , we had a tasting of Bordeaux 1982 a couple of months ago and the Mouton was equally bad as your 3 wines . My friend who brought the wine had recently bought it at auction in Belgium . Caveat Emptor !

Sorry to hear about ur Mouton.
Similar thing happened to me so now I wont make expensive purchases for older bottles anymore.

What were the condition notes? Do you have pictures of the bottles before opening?

You can usually only get a refund if the auction house somehow misrepresented the bottles (which doesn’t happen often).

It still amazes me how little discount buyers ask from wines bought in auction vs retail. Should be at least 30% if you have no claim for bad bottles.

Would never buy 1982 Mouton at auction. Notorious for low fills. Never heard if it was a cork, bottle, or bottling problem. Worried the consigner would only part with their worst bottles.

Sorry you had this experience. Personally, I would have opened one, checked it, and if shot, opened the second bottle. If that was also shot the unopened bottle would have been returned to salvage something out of an otherwise awful experience. No way I’d open all three without checking.

EDIT: You may have opened them one at a time, I don’t know. But if you did, it took some brass ones to take a chance that the third one might be good. Not for me, at $1,200+ per lottery ticket.

But does door number threee conceal a goat or a car?

Painful night.
'82 Mouton when on is glorious. But also for years has been used as poster child of risks of buying on secondary market (whether auction or retail). Super-prestige wines get traded a lot, more opportunities for damage, which is why wines known to be bought on release get significant premium (see the cases of 82 Mouton from Veritas owner a few years ago),
I have pretty good luck with auction bottles, but mostly buy non-trophies, and buy when I think price gives sufficient discount
But if bottles met description, caveat emptor.
Better luck next time
PS Doesn’t matter if cooked like it sounds here, and Bdx is better than say Piedmont, but I personally would not choose to open an older red with sediment a week after shipping

We have been through a number of older CA wines we got from friends or Berserkers. Some of those very well cellared were shot. Some of those that sat upright in the kitchen next to the stove were stellar. All of our 74 Louis Martini Cabs show signs of leakage and I doubt they are drinkable. The college kids from the 2009 Oenology class got their hands on part of an old cellar purchased by a broker who was pretty sure the wines were gone, so he gave them to the class for learning purposes, (write off). The tasting was here at the shop. The majority of the wines were 1981 to 1984 Chardonnay. There was one bottle of 1982 Johannesburg Riesling and one bottle of 1979 Petite Sirah. All of the Chards were drinkable upon opening and several were excellent. The darkest Chard was one of the better ones. The Petite Sirah was the wine of the night, ($7.99 price tag on bottle). The Riesling was an excellent sweet dessert wine about the color of sherry.