I guess I’m missing your point, Randy.
A few years ago, Mouton was celebrating its 150th birthday under Rothschild ownership and put on a huge extravaganza at the closing dinner at Vinexpo. They served 1982 from the cellars of Mouton. At one stage we had eight bottles on our table, and were fascinated by the variability of the wine that ranged from young ang powerful to very mature. I would imagine there were some bottles that were even worse and were culled before they reached the table. But as Dale said, when you get a good bottle, it is glorious.
This. Also should Hart Davis want to check the bottle, they have the chance.
I guess I’m a bit confused because based on your description of the wines, I can’t tell if they were corked or cooked or both? Damp basement would lead me to believe corked but color and other descriptors would lead me to believe cooked.
In any case, it is a bummer - and it truly sucks that these situations occur. As others have said, the issues of cooked wines will probably increase in the future with wines being traded, and therefore transported, more. Provenance is king . . .
Cheers.
I don’t know the history of this bottle but there was a lot of sketchy transportation back when those wines first came into the country. When I started buying wines around 1987 there were lots of bottles on the shelf that were clearly damaged. I suspect there were many more that were compromised but not in a visible way. That cleaned up a lot over the following ten years, I believe partly thanks to Robert Parker and Kermit Lynch who were both quite vocal about it.
Thanks everyone for the responses. Kind of lesson learned, I’ll be more careful with older vintages and auctions. Will probably get the next '80s Mouton from Benchmark or other sellers I have a good relationship with and will take the bottle back as they have indicated.
I really wanted to try the '82 since it came highly recommended from a lot of friends and also wanted to share it with close people during Thanksgiving dinner. Oh well… better experience next time hopefully.
Auction wines are a lottery, the more expensive the wine it seems the higher the risk. Ive had way more bad bottles from HDH than good.i dont blame them, it just seems to be the way it is with auction wines.
I find this an incredible post. You’ve had way more bad bottles than good, but you don’t blame them? That’s insane.
I haven’t bought at HDH auction in a while- for a while I was bidding but losing, and then I think they changed re shipping to NY, and it wasn’t worth finding a workaround with rarely winning. But the hundreds of bottles I bought before then were mostly good. As is the case with 80-90% of the older wines I buy at auction (probably closer to 90%)
I factor in a little risk (more with Winebid) but don’t think older bottles from auction show worse than retail. If a retailer offers a guarantee (Chambers would be the gold standard, though I have not taken them up on it the few bad bottles I’ve had) that is worth a premium. But most retailers don’t, though most would take remaining bottles back, though with older bottles I’m just usually buying singletons
But the idea that way more bottles are bad is ludicrous.
I do always factor in provenance issues into any bid.
Some of these auction trading names now remind me of ‘trading sardines’
Alex,
Bummer to hear on those Moutons. Hope the 15 Riverain was drinking well.
Steve, the Riverain was drinking really well! People kept asking for more, so we ended up opening 4 bottles of the Riverain, everyone loved it. I’ll be picking up some more next month when I drive down to Yountville again.
Dale
I thought instead of beginning a troll thread, he decided to insert the troll half way, and I was going to ignore it. But I will add that my experiences at auction mirror yours.
Alex, I am very sorry to read of your experience. As others have said, do please tell HDH about it. They need to know so they will be aware of the situation the next time that consignor attempts to sell wine. It is also important to tell them because their reaction to the situation will tell you a lot about whether you should do business with them in future. I anticipate they will be sincerely apologetic and take your comments proactively, but I have had situations like this with other auctions houses/brokers where their defensive and unpleasant reaction told me to never go back.
More generally, from my appraisal work, observations when I started buying wine in the mid 90s and visiting a lot of stores, and- unfortunately- at the tasting table, I came to realize many years ago that 1982-1990 Bordeaux is the most problematic general group of wines out there when it comes to heat damage in bottles sourced from the secondary markets.
I do not attribute it to importation practices but rather to retail storage conditions and the rather sluggish nature of the Bordeaux market at the time. You can throw off-vintages of DRC into this mix as well in some of the larger markets.
Prior to the late 1990s, cold rooms in retail stores were fairly rare. Additionally, Bordeaux- even in great vintages- did not sell out with anywhere near the speed it does today. When I started buying and drinking Bordeaux in 1995, all over Texas there were large retail stores that had stocks of top 82s and 86s on the shelf, as well as almost all of the first growths from 1988-1990. Many liquor stores had these wines too- not the full array, but usually there would be a few odd bottles of Lafite or Latour laying around. And all of it sitting at 70-75 degrees for the most part.
When I graduated and started my career at Arthur Andersen, I had occasion to travel frequently- and in the evenings I would often check out high end wine stores in cities all over the US. Same story as I had found back home- boatloads of top Bordeaux from 1982-1990 sitting on retail shelves. Now, the 1982s were not original release- at the time they were running about $250-300 a bottle for the firsts- but they had certainly been sitting around for at least a few years at retail, same as the 1988-1990 vintages.
As the wine markets took off, all of those wines disappeared into cellars. And since most of them had slowly cooked over time, sometimes sealed in OWCs for the few stores that could carry that much high dollar long term inventory, there were- and are- few outward signs that anything is wrong with the wines.
Remember too that many- perhaps most- people cannot spot heat damage as long as a wine is still drinkable. I was reminded of that very fact quite recently. Even on the wine boards there are many who cannot tell the difference. And so many of those bottles have been opened over time with the consumer assuming that is what aged Bordeaux tastes like. Sounds like yours were pretty far gone, but often heat damaged wines are quite drinkable and show secondary development- and so the problem persists at far greater levels than most realize.
There are a few hints that can help- though none is a perfect measure. For example, Mouton capsules of that era are a deep reddish-burgundy, but turn orange with excessive light exposure- even just sitting out in a room. So when buying Moutons from the mid 70s to late 80s, that is something to look for- if the capsules have gone a bit orange, I would not take a chance.
More generally, the safest way to buy these wines is in OWC, or bottles ex-OWC from a seller who bought them on futures or right at release. And expect to pay a serious premium for that- either at auction or from a broker.
Final thought- based on my general experiences as noted above, there are certain bottles which are on my highest risk list. This could vary a bit by market, but is reflective of what high end and slow-selling bottles were most commonly sitting around on shelves in the late 80s to mid 90s when Bordeaux sales moved at a snail’s pace through retail stores that did not have ideal storage,
Petrus - 1978, 1983
Lafite - 1982, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990
Mouton - 1982, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990
Latour- 1982, 1986, 1988
DRC- 1987, 1992
La Conseillante- 1989, 1990
Haut-Brion- 1982, 1988
Lynch-Bages- 1982, 1986, 1988
Dom Perignon- 1982, 1985, 1988
Cheval Blanc- 1988, 1990
Tom,
thanks for the explanation. This is why I appreciate this forum, honestly, I should’ve asked the more
experienced people here before buying. Now I know what to watch out for and what retailers to stick to.
I’ll be talking to HDH tomorrow and telling them about my experience. Hopefully they will pay better attention next time to the seller, wouldn’t want others to have the same experience.
I still want to find a bottle of '82 in a good condition to try, hopefully I’ll come across something in better condition.
While refrigeration and shipping practices have improved, the turnover frequency for such bottles seems to have increased, as collectors bid for them and as owners recognize appreciation profits, over and over again. That would naturally increase the cumulative risk of damage events, across time. Mishandling a bottle just once is enough to undo all the improved protective efforts, before and after a turnover. For that reason, I have long ago stopped buying older-vintage Bordeaux, unless very occasionally for immediate drinking.
The same turnover-handling risk occurs for the older-vintage California reds which I do buy, but they are much, much cheaper, thereby mitigating the pain when a bottle is damaged. Moreover, the overseas transport of Bordeaux to the US is a handling risk which California reds simply do not face.
I have had bad bottles from HDH, Winebid and Leland recently. You can this post a troll post if you like but it does not change my experiences with the bottles I purchased. I think a lot of people dump suspect bottles onto auctions where they dont have a comeback. If your buying cases from a collection then you will have a far greater success rate than the random bottles i purchased
I am still surprised no one commented on the wet basement descriptor and that no one mentioned the possibility of the wines being corked. I’d be surprised if all 3 were - but just interesting to me.
Cheers.
Any update? Thank you.
That’s too bad, but at least you got some pretty labels out of it! 
I got in touch with their VP of customer service, but after a few emails he stopped responding.
He basically said the seller is an old timer and they’ve known him. I asked if the seller was the original owner, but they wouldn’t tell me. Also said the seller had stored it properly.
I did ask them how it would be possible to have 3 bottles in this condition from a reputable seller who stored it properly, but never heard back. Seems odd to me that all 3 were bad, not a single bottle was even good enough for cooking…
He did offer to take me out to dinner in Chicago, which is funny, as he knows I’m in California and the chances of me going to Chicago any time soon is zero.
I won’t be buying from HDH anymore, will go back to Benchmark, at least I know they stand behind their sold items.