Craigslist wine

[William_Segui]

I’ve bought two bottles of CL, both separate transactions. One was 85 Mouton, the other 82 Ducru. Both were pristine & $100/ea. YMMV

[ToddFrench]

I just looked and found some local deals on ‘Charles Shawn Chardonnay 2010’ for only $15.00

[Dale_Williams]

Pretty sure that no one would set up a sting operation like this- the crime is selling wine without a license.

These aren’t really trophy wines, not something to be faked ( though I personally really like the '78 Pichon Lalande, and the Silver Oak might be very good- I say Silver Joke now, but '82 is very good). So if fills looked good might be worth taking a chance, though obviously at a real discount to regular retail, IF you are cognizant that its illegal, and you have no recourse.

[Nathan_Smyth]

In the state of California, I imagine that selling wine illegally would probably be slightly more serious than jaywalking, but slightly less serious than selling an “assault” rifle [which, in turn, would be substantially less serious than diverting clean water away from the delta smelt and into, say, a badly dehydrated human child’s stomach].

Although apparently they’re eyeing the jaywalkers as a new source of tax revenue:

L.A.'s over-the-line crackdown on jaywalking

Anyway, I just think that it’s pretty dadgum stupid to announce to the world that you’re going to break the law, and then actually go out and break the law exactly as you had announced to the world, and afterwards to act all surprised if some LEOs had decided to tag along for the ride with you.

[George_Chadwick]

Craigslist? Sure! Bring quicklime, a shovel, and duct tape.

[Rick.T]

I might be wrong but the only places I read about the wine police setting up stings is PA and the East Coast. I’ve never read anything or heard of any issues in CA/OR/WA.

I guess I gotta stop jaywalking now, cops must be getting bored.

[G_Bienstock]

@Nathan Smyth

@S. Reynolds

Does this actually happen?

The PA officers will drive unmarked cars over to NJ, or down to DE, sit in the parking lot of the liquor stores, watch for the cars with PA license plates, witness the PA residents come back out of the store with liquor/beer/wine in their arms [probable cause], and then either follow them back across the state line, or call in the license plate and the automobile description and have a state patrol officer arrest them when they cross back over the border.

I have heard of this happening in border towns on the Delaware River.

[M_Meer]

1988 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
1975 Chateau Pichon-Lalande
1978 Chateau Pichon-Lalande
1988 Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey Sauternes
1983 Chateau Lynch-Bages
1983 Chateau Prieure-Lichine

Depends on the asking price, but these are the only bottles that might interest me, especially the '83 Lynch Bages and maybe the Sauternes. It all depends on the $$$. I would look up auction values and go from there. Definitely a low-ball situation for me.

[S_Reynolds]

@Nathan Smyth

@S. Reynolds

Does this actually happen?

The PA officers will drive unmarked cars over to NJ, or down to DE, sit in the parking lot of the liquor stores, watch for the cars with PA license plates, witness the PA residents come back out of the store with liquor/beer/wine in their arms [probable cause], and then either follow them back across the state line, or call in the license plate and the automobile description and have a state patrol officer arrest them when they cross back over the border.

And then there’s the whole underage thing.

If you get caught selling liquor to ABC officers posing as minors, then there will be photographs, distributed to all the local newspapers, of you getting frog-marched off to your arraignment.

Underage is one thing, but this seems so stupid. I’m not doubting there isn’t probable cause, just saying it’s a waste of time to enforce this with planned sting operations or officers out patrolling for people “trafficking” wine. Then again, I disagree with many of the country’s wine shipping/sale restrictions…

[Nathan_Smyth]

Google something like “pension crisis california”.

Or “pension crisis san diego”.

You’ll get hits like these:

San Diego pension scandal

http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/metro/pension/pensiontimeline.html

San Diego Broke Laws in Pension Crisis, Panel Says (Published 2006)

All of these locales [not to mention the state of California itself] are completely broke - worse than broke - almost all of them are already effectively bankrupt.

If they could get, say, a $500 misdemeanor fine out of the purchaser of the alcohol, and, say, a $2500 felony fine out of the seller of the alcohol, with, say, an investment of four or five hours of LEO time and another four or five hours of DA time, do you not think that they would jump at the opportunity?

All of those numbers are fabricated completely out of thin air [just like how the Fed fabricates the fiat electrons completely out of thin air], but you get my drift.

What do they invest in a $150 speeding ticket?

30 minutes of LEO time and 15 minutes of DA time?

I dunno - but I guarantee you that there are City Managers and County Managers who know the numbers like the backs of their hands, and who allocate their resources accordingly.

[Chris_Seiber]

I appreciate that law enforcement is increasingly a revenue operation rather than a public safety operation, and I don’t doubt that law enforcement would be happy to crank some 4-figure fines out of something harmless like one adult selling a few bottles of wine to another.

But the reason that I wouldn’t consider this a meaningful risk, if I were the one doing the buying, is that these transactions as a category are far too few in number to be something the cops are going to want to learn about, start tracking down and prosecuting the people involved. How many Craigslist/Commerce Corner type wine sales are really going on? Far easier to crank out more speeding violations, DUIs, rolling stops, etc. They can pretty much get those at will.

[S_Reynolds]

@Nathan Smyth

Google something like “pension crisis california”.

Or “pension crisis san diego”.

You’ll get hits like these:

San Diego pension scandal - Wikipedia

http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/metro/pension/pensiontimeline.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/business/09pension.html

All of these locales [not to mention the state of California itself] are completely broke - worse than broke - almost all of them are already effectively bankrupt.

If they could get, say, a $500 misdemeanor fine out of the purchaser of the alcohol, and, say, a $2500 felony fine out of the seller of the alcohol, with, say, an investment of four or five hours of LEO time and another four or five hours of DA time, do you not think that they would jump at the opportunity?

All of those numbers are fabricated completely out of thin air [just like how the Fed fabricates the fiat electrons completely out of thin air], but you get my drift.

What do they invest in a $150 speeding ticket?

30 minutes of LEO time and 15 minutes of DA time?

I dunno - but I guarantee you that there are City Managers and County Managers who know the numbers like the backs of their hands, and who allocate their resources accordingly.

I understand all that and recognize that local governments often use their resources to bring in more money. (Actually I heard all about this stuff growing up in San Diego during the period you’re talking about. A lot of cities are flat broke.) I’m sure it’s effective for that and a large motivating factor in why they would do it. But I think laws like these shouldn’t be enforced because they’re bad law typically not crafted in consumer/public interest, not because they don’t bring in easy money.

[ToddFrench]

We have a forum for politics - let’s remember that

[A_Rubin_Stein]

On buying wine on Craigslist, this is a true story: Brooklynguy's Wine and Food Blog: Adventures in Wine Buying

Part 2: Brooklynguy's Wine and Food Blog: Adventures in Wine Buying...Continued

Part 3: Brooklynguy's Wine and Food Blog: Adventures in Wine Buying...The Final Chapter

[e_chin]

Thanks for that a real nice read

[Dale_Williams]

thanks AR for link, great read.
Out of curiosity, I just searched wine in NY CL for sale. Mostly fridges, a few openers, some empty bottles (?). But 3-4 wine offers. My favorite (repeated posts) is a 3L bottle of 1987 Bourgueil (producer not mentioned) for $1600. From shadowy pictures it looks like pushed cork and major seepage.

[Z_A_c_s_a_n]

Ditto on the great read, AR. Thanks.

Maybe better posted on the “You might have a wine problem if…” thread, but as I came to the end of the story, I found myself wondering whether I might have reserved some small measure of sympathy for the Russian thief, had he been really passionate about Italian wines and was drinking the stolen goods instead of fencing them on CL.

[David_Kaufman]

For the hell of it I searched a few local CL ads for wine and it seems like CL would be a great venue for someone looking to acquire back vitnages of Marilyn Merlot.

What is it with this wine that makes people hoard it? To me it has that ‘$2 bill’ feeling in which people think it MUST be worth more than face value because it’s rare and people collect it.

At the end of the day, a $2 bill is worth $2.00 and Marilyn Merlot is still just overpriced merlot…

[Pierre-Yves]

Great read for the CL adventure ! Thanks AR.
I love this piece :

What is so special about this wine, anyway?”I will admit that I didn’t know how to answer that question, at 8 in the morning, in the back of a squad car, a couple of gum shoes in the front. So I started to say “Well in Piedmont, they use a grape called Nebbiolo to make their finest wines…” and I rambled on in that vein for about 10 minutes, delivering a mini-lecture on Italian wine. It seemed like they weren’t all that interested. Then, and this really happened, they engaged in a heated debate about the merits of Budweiser versus Miller High Life

[David_Glasser]

Nice story, but if true why would the guy post it on a public forum, knowing that Konstantin was still at large?