“A plethora of”. I’m just jelly that you have “a dearth of”. You are poors like that.
Had my first casualty at the offsite this month. Just tipped it over and tried to grab it before it hit the cement, but too late. Broke just in time to slice my hand open as I went to grab. Still hurts 2 weeks later.
Oh well, at least it wasn’t a bottle that mattered - only Coche!
3 memorable broken bottles
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Magnum of 1988 Yquem which broke in the cellar. Wonderful smell for three days, and a disaster trying to clean as shards of glass and wine was lying in in impossible areas inside a double rack.
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A bottle of Heitz Martha’s 1976 which i bought from a restaurant in Savannah and broke in the White Plains airport coming back.
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A bottle Harlan 1992 which I was bringing to Cafe Evergreen in Manhattan for a BYO event, when the bag broke. There was a little wine left which we poured through a coffee filter.
Honorable mention as it’s slightly off theme. A bottle of 1988 DRC Grands Echezeaux which I inexplicably managed to leave in a bag at the Tarrytown station. By the time I came back hoping to find it still there, it had of course disappeared.
I have drunk a lot of great wines over the years, forgotten a few, but the disasters will stay in my memory forever.
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Maybe not “breakage” technically, but how about the time I learned Southern California basements can in fact flood in a rare non drought year…
Ouch!!
Last week I dropped my first bottle since I started collecting. I was sorting out my wine fridge at home, as I wanted to sell some of the wines.
A bit tired maybe, a wine just dropped out of my hand for no known reason and dropped down onto my cement cellar floor breaking in a thousand pieces.
It was a La Ca’Növa Montestefano 2016, so it could have been worse, but cleaning it up was a nightmare…
My favourite one recounted by someone else, is also cycling related.
He’d bought a bottle of red wine, and was cycling back with it in his rucksack. On the way back he had a minor fall, sliding along the ground before stopping. As he gathered his senses and checked the bike was ok (cyclist’s priorities 
) a number of people came rushing towards him, panic and concern written over their faces. Given the minor nature of the fall, he thought that weird… until he noticed the pool of blood-red shiraz forming on the tarmac.
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My worst breakage was a 1974 Mayacamas CS.
My wife broke a bottle of 1955 Cheval Blanc.
That last photo is truly dirty and rowdy. Couldn’t have picked a better label 
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I’m pretty sure that’s the one that sliced my foot!
Does anybody know a really good lawyer around these parts? 
The problem with filming, is that you can only film the aftermath! One of my greatest moments was actually Julie’s… She goes to the countertop to set a full glass of wine she lands 49% of the glass on the counter. The other 51% pulls the glass off she tries to catch it. Mayhem followed… It is amazing how much these beautifully made but very thin, glass l, wine glasses amplify a spill. We really needed David Attenborough to narrate this event and filmed in slow motion. I think he could’ve gotten a half an hour out of it. Wine hit the ceiling. I think she hit the glass three or four times before it actually fell. I think it went 10 feet in every direction All over her. It was a spectacle!
Love Jules! And I could visualize this totally!
I’ve been mostly lucky over the years, seldom dropping much, but about ten years ago, disaster struck - changing a light bulb in my cellar, I lost my balance and fell into the St.Julien rack - I did manage to catch or cushion the fall of some bottles, but a dozen or so slipped and smashed on the concrete floor. I can’t remember what I broke but there were some good bottles, of course (why couldn’t it have been the daily stuff?! Sod’s Law). The worst aspect was not losing the bottles, nor even the glass to clean up, but the appalling smell, which took weeks to clear.
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Every year for the past nine years, on the last Saturday in February, I hike up with some friends to cook pizza in a wood-fired “oven” made with local stone for runners at an overnight aid station on a ridge in the Virginia mountains. Along with a folding table, food, portable stove, pizza stone, pots and pans, I always bring a few bottles of wine. The side of my pack has two stretchy pockets- one on each side- that are perfectly sized for bottles of wine. Last year I slipped a 2013 Ceritas CS in one pocket and a 2002 Magdelaine in the other, throw the pack over my shoulder…and the Ceritas falls out and shatters on the rocks. 
This year I intend to be more careful!
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Maybe you guys should use Libbey 7533 Vina 16 oz. Customizable Wine Glass - 12/Case (webstaurantstore.com)
Julian,
If the wines smell that badly, you might want to start buying Burgundy. They smell better. 
Wow. Do you remember the name of the restaurant. I am really surprised that anyplace in Savannah would have had that back then. If anyone would have had it in Savannah, I would have thought it would have been my father’s wine store (although he sold the store and retired in late 1981) but I don’t remember him having any Heitz.
I was going to say… Appalling smell? Do wineries smell appalling?
Around forty years ago, so afraid memory fails.
That must be because they cost more!
The initial smell was of course terrific - it was after a few days that it turned sour and then it wasn’t so great.
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