A grey mkt importer alan, that buys but does not actually taste (or perhaps is dishonest) some coveted wine they are importing, it matters not that they brought them into your country in a reefer. From the PM I sent you, Wine Cellars Ltd. of Briarcliff, NYC (http://www.winecellarsltd.com), and previously Atherton (though Cornwell contends more recently they are reliable). They could buy from any source, you have no way of knowing what that source was. And if a wine predisposed to premox, if but slowly was hit by poor storage before acquired by such an importer, 5yrs or 10yrs down the road your precious wh Burg is premox’d, the end result is still the same. David Russell told me Atherton used to buy rare wines form a Paris wholesale operation that had an warehouse in Paris that was not temperature regulated, got quite hot in the summer. So what if Atherton or other grey’s ship in reefers if they don’t make sure of the provenance or even care?
I guess Alan wasn’t around the Wine House in the late 80’s, but I’ll bet Don Cornwell was. as was Somm to the stars, ponytail, white T-shirt wearing young Christian Navarro working there under his mentor Larry Siebel. There was a cache of pristine Leroy from the 1950’s that included the legendary '55 Leroy, in the original wood cases, paper/hay individually wrapped bottles. These were of course late-release Leroy as prior to the 1960’s original release Leroy bottles had a completely different style of label than the do now. From Atherton, shipped reefer containers, supposedly from an English cellar. A few weeks after I first saw them, they were all gone. I asked Larry about them, he said they opened a few for the clients and they did not impress, he said he thought there was something wrong with them and returned them all to Atherton. I’m quite sure Atherton resold these to someone else, the emperor wears no clothes syndrome is alive and well with the majority of wine collectors who are simply in denial… I fear.
David Russell also told me, that he had seen trucks covered with tarps, carrying unrefrigerated loads of Leroy wines headed for the export ports of Bordeaux area. Take with grain of salt, don’t have any proof of any of these ‘issues’.
Everyone here on WB is singing the praises of Dujac now (wasn’t the case back in the early 90’s) as being a superlative producer. I bought a $110 bottle of 1985 Dujac Bonne Mares from the Wine House in WLA, 6mo after ‘official’ channels sold out. Was imported from a Swiss company. Opened that Parker 97pt (highest rated Dujac) wine in the late 90’s- it was extra boring, nothing at all about it warranted a high score. It wasn’t spoiled/oxidized just nothing interesting about it a $40 Burg could not provide. I suspect poor storage conditions somewhere along the lines for a less that stellar performance. Much the same for ‘other’ wines.
Back in the Fall of 1993, I attended a small tasting (might post up an ancient tasting note) in Riverside that was Bipin Desai’s local tasting group, he invited me to attended as I was there to pickup a bottle of 1985 Ramonet Montrachet I bought from him—actually was to pick up 2 btls but I decided and I didn’t like the very lose capsule on one and declined. No import label on this one, had the green French tax seal on top the capsule. I didn’t ask Bipin where he obtained the bottles, what his sources were as the price was $100 less than current mkt prices. Now that paragon of notoriously demanding and finicky palate (like mine) Burghound rated more recently that '85 Monty as 98pts! The bottle I bought from Bipin, I opened for Burt Williams in early 1994 or perhaps fall 94. He opened a Peter Michael Chard that had the blue or red dot on the label signifying Helen Turley had made it. The Turley was not bad, the Monty was really quite underwhelming for what I expected to be a ‘wow’ wine. Had some funky notes to it that I had not, could not remember tasting in a Chard before. Burt, of much more precise and better palate noted something along the lines of saying it was mercaptans we were smelling/tasting in that wine (well Burghound, why didn’t you notice that?), further telling me that Steve Kistler likes to get that quality in his Kistler Chards to give them that Burgundian taste…and no, Burt was not joking! 
(at that time).
