Dropped a '78 Latour last night....

WINE TALK
21

Lost 2 of 6 375’s of 03’ D’yquem because I was being stupid handling them in my basement. I almost licked the floor. Very sad day, not even so much about the loss of $$$, more that I wasted such a beautiful thing.

22

Wow! I feel bad; a lot sad stories here. I guess I have been lucky, I have never broken a bottle by accident.

23

Sorry to hear about nice bottles being dropped. My one casualty was an 89 A Vallana Spanna. Nothing special but that $25 wine was one of my favorites

24

You never heard of a straw?

25

You ever seen 79th Street 3 days after a snowstorm?

26

I’ve never broken a bottle, but I’ve definitely dropped Burgundy on a hard tile floor. It fell out of those X shaped racks, and the sloped bottles are always precarious…

27

Never broke a bottle, but did accidentally open a 1996 Dunn Howell when I wanted a 1986 (which I then opened-- I think this was in 2009?), which resulted in a very nice little retrospective.

FWIW, 1986 was drinking spot on, have a had on a couple other occasions and it is fantastic. The 1996 was just starting to come into its own and could use another 5 years but opened up nicely.

Cheers!

28

dropped a 95 Lafite , parking lot, after a charity auction, very much the suxxors.

had 97 cinq cepages crushed in my bag, airport, heading to orlando. my clothes smelled good @ Diz and i had pink undies.

29

1951 Offley Baron De Forrester Colheita Port. The cellar smelled nice for a while after that.

30

Apart from The difference between being a wine lover and a Berserker! - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;,

I have dropped a few bottles. The worst, a mag of 1988 Yquem which seeped into parts of the cellar that were all but impossible to clean. The smell turned from glorious to nasty, and supported several generations of insects before I found a way of cleaning the entire area.

31

A few weeks ago I had a bottle of 2002 Alban Reva tumble from the top of a 6’ tall rack as I was moving some other bottles around. It bounced off of some boxes on its way to hitting the concrete floor. It didn’t break, but not wanting to take any chances that the glass was weakened by the fall, I opened it a few days later. It was a really good bottle of syrah. But it was consumed before its time.

32

Had a section of pull shelves-over loaded the top shelve-

pulled the top shelve and down it went and all the ones

under-lucky to only lose 7-8 Burgundy’s but 3 were Beze.

33

98 Biondi Santi Brunello Annata in 07. Leaned over after removing box of 4 from car–lid opens-there goes one. Garage smelled great for 2 weeks. Did or did I not try to get a taste from residue in base of bottle remnant? I did.

34

Which proves you are a true Berserker:

The difference between being a wine lover and a Berserker! - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

35

I once dropped a '86 Mouton. It was my only one. I still feel [swearing.gif] about it.

36

Jeff, I had just about repressed it until you posted this thread. The bottles came from Inglenook and date to preprohibition. Not something easily replaced, if, at all. Have 1 left. 1910 Inglenook Private Stock Port. Even has two 4 cent IRS tax stamps on the back of the bottles. Fill is mid-shoulder. On the 3 times (one of the bottles that broke was opened in CA so lost 2 full bottles and 1 partial in the spill), that I enjoyed the wine, its quite excellent considering was stored for about 80 years in a basement in San Fran. Its more like a tawny port than ruby but has excellent fruit and caramal flavors. A lot of history in the glass. [cheers.gif]

37

Very cool. Glad it wasn’t your only one! Great story.

38

Jeff,

Some additional details on the story. The purchase also included the original Inglenook wood crate and the bottles are of different sizes. The glass is really unique showing all sorts of imperfections. Bubbles, lines, etc. Bottles are of mass production but certainly quality has only increased over the years. The labels are all in great shape, my guess from not being in a humidity controlled storage.

Losing 3 in the drop in the airport did suck but didn’t cause a mess as I put each bottle in a ziploc. I think I cried as I threw out 3 bags of wine filled with broken glass but was happy to see 3 didn’t break. What might be the bigger crying point is that I was also offered a case of 1910 Inglenook Sherry too, but passed. Was too young to know what I really had.

39

Luckily I’ve never dropped a bottle. I did hit the neck of an '86 Monty 3l on the door of my offsite storage locker- neck sheared off but the bottle remained intact. Quickly put together a dinner to consume the bottle with friends. Lost a little but felt lucky in the end.

40

Wasn’t a Dropped bottle, but same result. Had to be c1993. A bottle of '80 Petrus.

I was just “getting into” wine.

I was moving, and it was a very short move. Maybe 10-15 miles total. I “packed up” a bunch of bottles, in wooden boxes. Pretty embarrassed, even now, to admit that I never thought about the truck hitting bumps. I had a number of them in each box, lying down on top of each other. Yeah, I know, genius! [head-bang.gif] [head-bang.gif]

When the truck arrived, I was horrified that 5 bottles broke. And I was even more horrified when I say a half bottle (meaning broken full bottle) of '80 Petrus. Label was presenting itself beautifully on the half of the glass that I could see. Not that it was that great of a bottle, but I would have liked to have tried it anyway. [cheers.gif]