Mis-labelled. How many potential bidders will squint and notice?

Ok, I’ll bite. What’s wrong with the label? Other than why celebrate 11th anniversary. Odd year.

Yeah I can’t figure it out either.

The auction header does not note as the Anniversary Release reserve bottling, while the bottle image does, and the pricing reflects that of the cheaper but still-wonderful Howell Mountain Selection.

Winebid seems to be consistently inconsistent with these bottlings …

The pricing appears to be right in line with WMJ valuations, at least as reported via CellarTracker, and not a bargain, especially when you add buyer’s premium, tax, and shipping.

The Anniversary bottlings have jumped sharply from the Howell Mountain Selection ones, in recent pricing. The latter now sell for what for former did, just six months ago.

I’ve had them reneg after auction close once the discrepancy was noticed. It was the Reserve in the picture, not in the description, so they nullified the auction.

Suppose that’s what’s fair for the seller, but not fun.

You bid honestly per open representations. Did the auction company compensate you for its error?

The History tab of this auction lot maps this Anniversary Release to the price history of the Howell Mountain Selection.

No. They offered me the same bottle at a higher price.

Duplicate

They waived shipping on the case I already had with them and they offered me the same bottle at a higher price.

Turns out upon reinspection, there was past seepage so cancelling was fine. I had asked them to check because the picture might’ve been wrong. The picture was right but the conditions statement was wrong

A very good story, then.

I’m not getting what’s wrong. I forget when, but every Howell Mountain cab release from a certain date had “Anniversary…bottling” on it…so, what’s your point?

I’ve spoken to them on the phone about images that don’t match the written descriptions, and their advice to me was that the written description is the governing one for what a buyer is purchasing. So if you bid on a bottle XYZ vineyard ABC, but the image shows (perhaps) a better vineyard DEF (inconsistent with written description), and one ends up getting ABC on delivery buyers cannot come back and say “I thought I was getting DEF”.

Apparently some of the mismatches happen because for some auctions they are not posting fresh pictures of the bottles offered, but just pulling from their library of images.

In the last 5 years this has only hooked me once, where I bought something called a Bandol AOC, but it was some other bottling by a producer who had many regions in their lineup, and the picture had been of their Bandol rather than what I ended up getting delivered. And at the time I had not realized one had to compare images/descriptions more carefully.

All that being said, WineBid service/accuracy has been very good. I’ve experienced other auction houses - who should know better - ship me $8 fighting varietals from a producer rather than the correct AVA, single vineyard, estate bottlings. Fixing those issues were harder, and generally meant that I wasn’t going to reengage with that house.

One thing I’ve started noticing more, and it doesn’t seem like an innocuous mistake, is second wines being described in their headline description with the Grand Vin’s name. I also see co-op wines, with some kind of special bottling brand, just being described with their fantasy brand name, rather than the co-op producer, and then the specific bottling from them. Both of these nomenclature issues won’t screw over the experienced, but seem designed to catch the unwary, trusting, or less clueful.

La Jota has two bottlings, Howell Mountain Selection and Anniversary Release.

Thanks guys, we will check it out and let you know. -Russ

Verdict?

Reading wine labels is tricky even for people with experience. Given what WineBid sells I’m not surprised they miss little stuff like this occasionally given the volume. I’ve benefitted from these sorts of mistakes at least twice. I’ve had another where the vintage in the photo didn’t match the description. I wanted the wine in either case so I bid anyway. They asked me a week later if I was ok with the vintage in the photo versus the titled vintage without difference in price.

I was a bidder as was I on a 97 that got pulled.