Happy to know this before visiting down under!
But now that you mention it, I might try to sneak in an edible next time we’re in Bretagne.
Good plan.
Early on in my wine journey I brought a 47 Petrus to Per Se for a special dinner and the somm graciously hinted that they thought it was a fake. In retrospect it clearly was! Keep in mind this was well before Rudy and Rodenstock were made public and I was not regularly buying wines of this age and level.
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Mine happened very early on before I really had had even a single glass of “good” wine. I was back from college and volunteering at a big city event, manning the wine station. There were a few bottles of whites being chilled in a big cooler with ice. The reds were sitting out on tables. Thinking someone forgot to chill the reds, I threw a bunch into the cooler. When the first person came up and asked for a glass of red, I told him they weren’t chilled yet and to come back later. He politely told me that the reds are not meant to be “iced”.
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Barrel tasting at Brown Estate, in the Chiles Valley area of Napa. So many delicious, full-throttle zinfandels. Then, we enjoyed a bottle of rose in the sun. Oh, it was like 90 degrees out. Designated driver drove us down the windy road back to Yountville. I summarily puked right outside Yountville Market.
That’s how I learned to spit at tastings…
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This is easy. About a decade ago I went to BillS monthly lunch with a bottle of 1985 Lafon Santenots du Milieu wrapped in a brown paper bag stowed in a canvas shopping bag. For the previous few months a real heavyweight of the Burgundy collecting world had been joining us so I wanted to seem like I knew what I was doing.
As luck would have it his bottle went before mine and it was a recent release of the Lafon Village Volnay. Could this be any better? I insisted that my bottle go next and I waited in anticipation of the complements that were about to come my way.
The first guess came from a younger member of the group who guessed young CdP. At this point I sniffed the wine, could a 2 decade old Volnay smell this young. Oh oh. I had given the Sommelier a bottle I had bought earlier that day. It was a Crista Côtes du Rhône.
So, it turns out I really don’t know what I am doing.
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Robert,
There is a story that a major collector brought a bottle of 1947 Petrus to Charlie Trotter’s. When the somm opened the bottle, he asked the collector to come over and showed him the cork. Someone had scribbled Two Buck Chuck on the cork put it into the bottle with the Petrus capsule. Not sure if true, but a great story.
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Not really embarrassing for me but at a wonderful restaurant, Le Benetin in Saint-Malo, France, last week we had a very fun champagne moment. The restaurant is decorated throughout with various large format champagne bottles of stupendous quality. So I’m thinking okay, these guys are pros. We were on a group trip and I ordered a bottle of Jacquesson 747 which was price appropriate to share on our side of the table.
A young woman, probably 24 or so, is tasked with opening and serving the champagne. She was, um, unprepared for the pressure of the cork, which rocketed out, bounced off the huge bay window, followed by a short burst of champagne across her shoulder and the window by which she’d been setting up the bucket. Oops! It was a fun stifled laugh, but I lost a good bit of bubbles!
For a me oriented giggle, I’d read that if you just hold a wax capsule tight and kinda twist your hand around it a bit the heat from the friction makes the wax supple and much easier to remove without fracturing into a bunch of bits. So I’ve got a bottle of Ceritas or something I’m excited to share with my dad and I’m using this technique and he’s just staring at me and finally asked, with a straight face, “so, did it at least take you on a date or two first?” At which point I realized, ahem, what it must have looked like…
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Was at a black tie charity event about 15 years ago and 10 minutes in spilled red wine on my very white shirt. So I spent the rest of the event in my tuxedo with a giant red stain in the middle of my shirt. Pure class!
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So let me get this straight…
It’s hard.
You rub it to get it off.
It’s then soft, and you can pull your cork out.
Is this why they don’t sell wine to minors?
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omg this is gold
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When, after a long search, I finally drank my first Overnoy, I liked it but commented that they are way over hyped and priced and definitely not worth the chase. Now Overnoy is the #7 producer (by value) in my cellar and I adore the wines so much I actively seek them out, even at auctions…
In my first year of really getting into wine, I brought a bottle of Caymus to a well-known restaurant in Atlanta to pay corkage, and thought I was being so gracious by offering a tasting pour to the somm 
To his credit he accepted it graciously and drank it there with us. But I’m sure he was judging hard
I’ve only tasted one bottle of Caymus ever, and it was horribly corked
I want to do a grand tasting of stuff like Caymus, Rombauer, Barefoot, Meiomi, Yellow Tail, Apothic, Josh, etc. All of this stuff I’ve never tasted and want to see what I’m missing out on.
One of the funniest things that sticks out in my mind was on our first visit to State Bird in San Francisco.
I’m always looking for that under the radar moderately priced wine and decided on an Arnot Roberts white. I can’t even remember which one but I did not know of it, but that intrigued me even more because I knew it would be very nice.
When the somm returned with the wine, he told me how incredible it was to have picked that particular wine and how he only received 3 bottles a year ect ect .
He knew I was in the know because I got the pronunciation perfect. Ar-Not rather than Ar-No.
In fact I had zero idea, but he told us the family history. I just said I really enjoyed wine and their wines.
It happened so fast and it was cool that he really took an interest in us from that point, bringing some samples and engaging in good conversation.
As a notoriously bad pronunciator I told my wife I’m not saying another producers name no matter what when it comes time to select a red
I navigated every other conversation overly careful and ordered a red (I can’t remember which) by pointing to the list somehow. 
The somm did a great job, but I was just trying to keep up with his assumptions about how cool I really was.
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that doesn’t sound like an accident!!
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We were doing an Italian wine themed dinner at Pappardelle in SF. (Doesn’t seem to be there anymore.) The dinner plates were insanely huge and we had tons of bottles and stems, their stems, on the table. Glasses had to be tucked under the plates to fit. As I reached forward to grab a bottle the underside of my forearm barely brushed one of my stems. It broke just above the base. I felt it and reacted by retracting my arm back and catching the bowl with an open palm. Just a tiny bit spilled. But, I spent quite a few minutes having to hold this big bowl with wine in it and no way to put it down while trying to wave down various staff who all ignored me.
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Last week, in Copenhagen. We’re at a wine bar that serves wine in Zaltos. I’m chatting with the staff about cleaning / taking care of them, and I mention humorously that even though I think the dishwasher is safer than handwashing, I had a mishap the week prior where I dropped a bowl and smashed two of my Zaltos.
Naturally, about 10 minutes later, I break one of their Zaltos. Shards of glass and wine everywhere. They even had the kindness to trust me with another! (thankfully only one casualty this time)
For the record, this technique works really well. Just saying.
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Yall stress too much over this stuff! I just put the big Campy screw on it and pop it off!