Has anyone ever seen a champagne bottle with the collar broken entirely around? (see attached photos.) One friend suggested the bottle could have been opened and refilled. Another suggested it may have been submerged in water for an extended period and broke where it meets the foil. Curious if anyone has a thought.
Thanks
I’ve never seen that. What’s the Champagne?
It looks like it had a silver label wrapped around the seam and the over label degraded.
Maybe changes in humidity caused the label over the seam to expand and contract. Is it paper? That’s what it looks like.
Selosse, and by the looks of it not a young bottle! Let us know how it shows!
Correct. I bought it from Acker, and the lot description made no mention of this (and described the badly scuffed and soiled label as lightly so). I’ve now been emailing them for a month about how they want to address it.
What’s to address? It looks like an old sticker wore off.
Looks like the I guess tin- or aluminum-based collar oxidized over time whereas the capsule itself was fine. Likely a high humidity cellar, a good sign rather than a bad one. Assuming it must be around 15 years old?
Especially if the label was scuffed enough to obscure important information, someone may have cut the foil to take a peak at the cork through the glass to ensure that it hadn’t been tampered with. Take a look at this link and scroll down to “CCV”; Provenance Guarantee | Benchmark Wine Group | Benchmark Wine Group