I don’t have quite this many bottles but I think this has been a little bit of a boondoggle for the organizers. In, 2005 they allowed separate labels for each person with a basic hospice design. I don’t remember how long the crazy label approval took from Bouchard but it was a long time. I would hope this is sorted out very soon.
Hey now…if ANYONE was going to get banned due to a post on that thread, it woulda been me…and I’m still part of that infrequent foot traffic over there.
Progress appears as if it is being made, albeit much more slowly than ANYBODY would have liked. There’s no need to start a thread titled “Hospice wines lost” when an update earlier in year said that wines were properly stored in NY but that there were issues with the correct mix of wood shipping boxes (I can only presume some people ordered mixed size cases or that wines were cased in 12’s when a number of people had ordered 6’s, etc) that was hoped to be corrected in order to still hit the Spring shipping window.
For those not sure about everything they have ordered, I would try to NICELY ask David for what his records showed. He helped me out with a similar request last year after verifying that I was indeed the person that bought the wines.
Eric–I can think of a reason or two…
Suzanne–I ordered about a third of what you did, and I want to believe the same thing…
I called David this AM. we shall see how quickly he responds. There are really only about 4 whses that this wine can be at. There are zero legitimate reasons why that info cannot be disclosed. First of all, I am not a customer of HAG, but a member/partner. I have every right to know where our/my assets are.
Squires is of course an ass, but he never misses a chance to squelch anything that might be remotely helpful to his readers. Throw a tenacious and well informed Eric Levine in the mix and its sure to get punted.
You couldn’t figure out that Madooff was an obvious fraud and now you think there is one with the HAG wines? You’re 0-2 and about to go down swinging.
Gus, not cool.
Thanks Gus. That’s really kind of you. Yes, it’s a shame that my parents were best friends with Robert Jaffe who I made the mistake of trusting. I will regret that for the rest of my life.
And if you read my posts you will see that I am not accusing David of running a Ponzi scheme. Rather, I am just wondering why is he self-deleting his posts, suddenly stripping HAG info off of his LinkedIn page, and he won’t just say the name of the warehouse where the wine is stored.
gus, you are really a piece of work. im sure you have never made a mistake. get a life
Without being involved, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a major part of the holdup. Each individual label is likely to need its own documentation, approval, verification and whatnot, even for the slightest of changes, and if there are what looks to be more than a dozen involved in multiple states there is a good chance there are a few unexpected headaches bogging things down. Compliance paperwork in the USA can be a bitch; may also explain why those overseas have already gotten their orders. Importers have secretaries that do almost nothing but compliance filing, and with a part time person handling it it probably compounds everything. A more uniform label may not have been as appealing to some, but would likely have helped get the wine in hand faster.
I don’t have a horse in this race and know David from boards only but something is not right here. This were bottled in early 2007, it shouldn’t take 4 years for them to arrive here. I used to be a wine buyer for the big Piemontese restaurant in NY. I would get fine and rare wines from all over Europe have broker consolidate all the shippment for me and import them all here. he had to file for 50 different labels and wines would be here in 3-6 months. It never took more than 6 months.
the label is not the issue. i 100% guarantee that.
remember people - david is claiming that the wine is here. customs could turn back wine sent w/o label approval, hence why its done before or at very least while the container is on the water. thus if he is telling the truth and its in the US, the TTB paperwork has been done and cleared.
to give you all some perspective, I just cleared 7000 bottles with 500 different labels in one week. through the same channels all importers use to do the same!
What a really shitty thing to say.
Oh that’s nothing. For fun just go and read the reader comments that litter all articles about Madoff. It turns out that a lot of people are really happy that “rich Jews got screwed.” If Gus wants to insult me for the mistake of trusting people around me, he has to try an awful lot harder. All I can say is bring it. It will pale in comparison to the hell I give myself.
However, let’s not get off track. The only question that matters is a really simple one that David can answer in less than one second. What warehouse are the wines currently stored in? Period. If you don’t know the answer to that question by the end of the week then I think I am winning my apparent bet with Gus.
You know… David could clear this all up by giving detailed, honest information. I’ve never understood what’s so hard about that. People who now say ‘well the wine’s here’ seem to ignore the fact that it’s supposedly been here for 4 months. Why hasn’t it shipped out to people if that’s the case? I get that it’s not his sole focus, but when you’re dealing with on the order of $100,000 and wine that is years late, the least you can do is to be communicative. Deleting HAG information, board posts etc simply doesn’t inspire trust. That’s on no one but David. It’s not hard at all to regularly update the people who’ve entrusted you with their money.
Lets stay off the personal issues folks.
This whole thing has been a really bad experience. I certainly agree with Marc Lazar that it would be nice to get a confirmation that the wine is actually sitting in warehouse. We got an email from David at one point that he was waiting to get results back on the temperatures that the wines were exposed to during trans-atlantic shipping. And another email about labels being a problem. And then another email about boxes being messed up. Seems like an inordinately high number of problems and set-backs. In fact, I think a lot of this could have been handled more professionally/logically (i.e., “guys, the special labels are a pain in the ass, let’s skip them” and “the boxes are messed up, we can ship now in standard styro boxes if people prefer…”). I am assuming (naively?) that the wine was actually purchased at the auction (can this be confirmed?), so if there was to have been some type of fraud perpetuated then it would have involved selling barrels of wine or the bottles themselves. That to me seems like a stretch, but since I wrote a check for this stuff in 2006, I guess anything is believable.
Does anyone have a contact at HdB or Henriot? I have a hunch that the wine was purchased, bottled and labeled. IIRC, our european members have taken delivery.
If there is fraud, my guess is it started as an accident and became a coverup. something like wine being seized, wrong paperwork for import, etc. not that the wine was not purchased.
In a scenario like this, what are the costs associated with bottling, labeling, import, and distribution? Is that included in the auction price or managed separately after the barrels are purchased? Who is managing and auditing all of these details?
As an 06 buyer, I’m pretty much out of faith and that’s after giving the “benefit of the doubt” for years. I’d love to get my share, but am equally ready to chalk it up to a very poor buying decision. The situation reeks of cover-up. A mistake that won’t be made again.
RT
Those costs are all extra as is the expense of the elevage which is the most costly.
It appears to me that Posner may be correct.