For me, it was a double-header. I was taking a mixed case out of my car, but was apparently arrogant in thinking I had a good grip on it, and dropped the whole thing. Ten bottles survived, amazingly (it was about a three foot drop).
Alas, I lost one each of these:
2006 Domaine Chandon de Briailles Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Ile des Vergelesses
1994 Burgess Cellars Vintage Selection
The aroma began with a sense of idiocy with a note of stewed plums, and opened up to a mid-palate fear of shards of broken glass, with a 60-second finish of cursing myself acccompanied by an undercurrent of hot, sticky concrete. Worst QPR ever.
A couple years ago I was grabbing a bottle from my little “stairwell stash”. It was nothing fancy - a simple Greek red - but it was a wine brought back from our honeymoon that I was looking forward to sharing with family. Spun to head back on up the stairs and caught the edge of a bottle on my 6 iron.
Bottle shattered like it was safety glass, probably half the wine went on the floor, the other half in my golf bag. Glass shot everywhere, and I was barefoot. I was beyond livid… my wife and father and law very calmly and graciously navigated down around me in the state well to help extricate me.
By the time my wife had cleared the glass out of my way so that I could get to the top of the stairs, I saw that my father in law had taken out every club and washed it off, emptied the contents of my golf bag, and had it draining on the porch.
Chris Iannetta, (Jack Wine, Colorado Rockies), came across some 2004 Elderton Command Shiraz and bought two bottles, one for himself and one for Carrie. He shipped the bottle to us overnight and it showed up a week later. Meanwhile, Chris drank his bottle and was disappointed it was past its prime and near tasteless. When Carrie’s bottle showed up, we took it home for dinner, confident we had a backup wine at home just in case. I was carrying my fanny pack over my shoulder, murse and a box of groceries, with my left hand and the bottle was tucked between my left arm and stomach. Grabbed the mail with my right hand and as I stepped back onto the driveway I felt the bottle slip, but had no way to grab for it. The bottle landed inches from my left leg and shoe and disintegrated. The color was beautiful, the nose was spicy black fruits. Not a drop on my shoes or pants.
Carrie lets Chris know what happened the next day and he laughed, called it Karma. Several hours later, somebody tweets to Chris that grandpa had been holding a bottle of Jack since December and tonight is the night they were going to open it, but he dropped it and the driveway smells really good.
once set down too hard a full bottle of expensive Tesseron cognac and the bottom of the bottle separated from the rest of it and, whoosh, cellar smelled great for a month.
Managed once to allow a bottle of Ezio Voyat fall all of 3 inches (the danger of using storage boxes as racking) and the base of the bottle just sheared right off. Called the picture “death of a unicorn”.
Dropped a magnum of Kracher in my garage a few years ago. Smelled great for about 6 months but was also a constant reminder of said dropping of the bottle.
Knock on wood… In all my years of handling bottles in and out of a crawl space cellar I have only broken two bottles of relatively inexpensive zin when I dropped a case. I take it as proof the God approves of wine as the chosen beverage.
This past Sunday I broke the first bottle in my home cellar - a 2007 Calera Jensen. It could have been worse, I was getting a backup bottle and the two bottles that I’d placed in an insulated wine bag fell off the table. Only the Calera broke.
