I have no wine

Sadly and tragically, we had a major catastrophe at Stately Jones Manor when a water supply line broke and flooded much of the house, including our bedroom, our living room, my library, and my wine cellar. The insurance company has now boxed up the contents of six capacious rooms and hauled them off to some faceless warehouse, to be returned at the turn of the next century. I came home to find my entire 600-bottle wine collection boxed up and inventoried, along with all of my darkroom and negatives, plus my entire library. The heartless bastards. I have been left entirely adrift and marooned, bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. All I have to show for a life of obsessive collecting is a wife and two children. Not much of a consolation prize. I would drink to my sorrows, but . . . . .
Perhaps ( . . . I shudder at the thought . . . ) I should embrace sobriety.
A very dry Phil Jones

All I can say good luck with everything.

Good lord Phil, that’s horrible! And to be honest, more the negatives than the wine! The insurance will go some distance to replacing the wine but your pictures! Wow! So sorry!

As long as it wasn’t a boiling hot water/steam pipe which burst, the wine should be fine.

Many of the labels will be ruined, so the wines won’t have much resale value at the tony auction houses, but for actual drinking-with-meals purposes, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

[So take the insurance check, and then repurchase all of your old wine at the insurance auction for $0.05 or $0.10 on the $1?]

PS: I would also want to try to save as many of the photographic negatives as possible.

Sorry to hear this. I don’t want to give you a speech about this and that.
I will only say, stay strong… I feel for you.

My condolences. If you were 180 miles nearer, I’d open a bottle for you.
There is, we all know, always more wine.

My company does a few jobs a year for the restoration companies, where we pack the cellar and store it until the house is ready again. Typically, in the case of water damage, the wine is fine, they just are getting it our of the house for both security reasons, and because of the heating and drying necessary to restore the house. Hopefully, that is the case for you as well. My only suggestion is to make sure that the restoration company knows that the wine should be stored in one of the offsite facilities in your area, and not with other household goods.

Wow, that’s dramatic and sad. Will you get your wine back, because water damage is no biggie, as you don’t drink labels, but…the negatives(!).
Argh!

Well maybe it stays so cold in Portland in the summertime that even the idiots at the insurance company won’t be able to ruin the wine if they leave it in a warehouse without air-conditioning.

Knock on wood.

The wine did not get wet. It was moved in order to replace the floors. I hope the same is true of the negatives and the library. The insurance company is very good (Amica) and has treated us very well in the past. There is no evidence to suggest that their employees are idiots. Quite the contrary.
Phil Jones

Sounds like it’s time for a “Philip on tour” trip ala Mike Grammar! Come on down we will open plenty of bottles for you [cheers.gif]

That being said I hope everything works out for the best.

I’ll second that. As if we needed another reason to fire up your pizza oven anyways [cheers.gif]

Hope it all works out, Phil!

This is one of those times where having a good insurance company like Amica comes into play. And why you pay a premium for premiums compared to some lower rated companies . Hope they do right by you (as they usually do).

As long as we are on the subject of Amica:
The have great customer service.
They have no agents to take a markup or commission.
They are a mutual company with no shareholders.
The profits are returned to the policyholders in the form of rebates/dividends.
The last time we had a claim, they were great.
Let’s hope that continues . . . .
Phil Jones

Why wouldn’t they give you the opportunity to move your wine to a safe place if there was no damage or claim to be made on it?

So the title should read “I have no wine temporarily” since it’s not damaged at all, just not at your disposal.

Yes, it is temporary, as my original post indicated it will be returned someday.
They moved the wine and everything else in those rooms just to get them out of the way. Those rooms contained a lot of crap and we need to be able to move around in the other rooms. It was a matter of space. For example, they took several bicycles that were entirely undamaged. They needed to get everything out quickly so they could mitigate the water damage.

So sorry, Phil. Thankfully it sounds like the wine is ok and you have trust in your insurance carrier. Hoping the same is true for your photo negatives.

I would take this as an excuse to go buy a bunch of wines you’d like to try – wines of types you don’t already own.

(Being a former lawyer, I’m good at rationalizations.)

That is awful Phil. Hang in there.

I don’t want to say the awful “it could be worse”, but…you could be stuck with my wife and kids.