gives new meaning to the term “swan song.”
I’d sell that car too!
So far, I think you’re winning hands down, Berry.
If it’s any consolation, you can recall Bill Sokolin accidently cracking the ~1787 ‘Thomas Jefferson’ Lafite against the waiter’s cart at the Four Seasons.
Berry definitely wins.
My worst was when extracting a bottles fro the top shelf of our tall unit’s top row. I had one in one hand and was pulling another with my other hand. As I did that pulled a third bottle out of the rack and airborne. I recognized it as one of the bottles that we had saved from our wedding to drink on a later anniversary. So as it dropped neck down I decided to try and break its impact with my sandaled foot. Somehow it the neck hit the bare top of my foot where there’s no meat and opened up a geyser of a bleeder. Lost the wine, ended up in the e.r., and had to use crutches for a week.
The lesson here is that one should always carry a straw in one’s back pocket.
While perhaps not as big a loss, I think yours is the better story.
Sorry to hear about your loss Berry!
Well - UPS “lost” a case of wine that I sent ahead from my storage for a fun wine weekend not to long ago. The case of wine contained some special bottles that I had been storing for a long time 
- that I was about to share - worth a fair amount of $… UPS scanned it into the main city warehouse where it was supposed to get out on a truck and be delivered by 10am - overnight delivery. The scan showed up but the box went missing - forever and ever - probably fell off the back of the truck and landed in some mob bosses dinner table :p. I still don’t understand how UPS doesn’t have some sort of camera coverage or report back from whomever scanned the box at the final warehouse location??? Got nothing back from UPS - outright theft I think.
A few OWC 3-pack boxes of older Vega Unico fell about 8yrs ago - lost a couple bottles and the OWC actually absorbed enough of the impact to save the others - it was an amazing site to see the condition of the wood cases - they may be more protective than we think - not just for looking nice… That was a sad day but the cellar smelled great for a long time 
!
Dare I ask how your marriage is doing? ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
How do you think the road is smelling now?
Tonight, we had authentic Chinese from a local source along with a 2010 J.J. Christoffel Erdener Treppchen Riesling Kabinett. After clearing the plates, I refilled my glass in the kitchen. As I walked back toward the dinner table, my 12-year-old daughter, unaware of my presence, stood up just as I was passing and head-butted my newly filled glass across the room, shattering the glass on the tile floor.
Relatively speaking, this was not a true disaster. We were not using our best stems, and only a single glass of wine was lost. It may take a few more reassurances before my daughter believes that we don’t think the accident was her fault. Nevertheless, when it happened I immediately remembered this thread. For what it is worth, my kitchen floor has never smelled better.
Dirt and acetic acid
Klutzy Putzy, AKA WWOTW knocked over and broke 3 100 point QC’s. Other than that, the earthquake 2 years ago emptied six or seven cases of high end Cabs, SQN’s, every screw cap Riesling in the building, every decanter, 1/4 of the stemware.
And then there was yesterday when Klutzy Putzy folded the needle trying to Coravin a Chard. That means uncorking everything served by the glass and gassing them.
I think I’ve only broken a single bottle that I can recall, mishandled coming out of my wine cabinet.
My best/worst wine disaster wasn’t the loss of bottles, it was the time I opened an old bottle of vintage Brut sparkling wine from Italy, the old cork snapped off when I pulled it, I set it down on the kitchen counter for a moment to grab a corkscrew, and the heel of the cork shot out. Bad luck, the bottle was directly below a can light, and it sent a million tiny shards of glass everywhere in my kitchen. Inside cookbooks, fruit baskets, open drawers, and of course all over the floor and everything.
We were leaving for our first wine trip to Italy the next morning, and we were cooking dinner for my parents who had come into town to watch our infant while we were away.
It’s good to see you posting, Berry. Are you still working at the zinfandel project? I’ve always been interested to see how that turned out - I really like the idea of zin getting a fuller spectrum of styles out there from which consumers can choose.
I broke a magnum of Yquem 1988; it smashed against the floor and oozed all over the cellar. Sticky nasty mess that had a gorgeous smell for several hours and then really unpleasant thereafter. It took days to really clean up and that meant removing every bottle at the bottom and trying to clean between the slats.
I thought that authentic Chinese came from China?
Of course, there, they just call it “food.”
I think many believe I married above my grade. Still going strong at the 15+ year mark. I joke with my wife that after hosting a lot of fun events, most of the winos like her more than they like me.
We even have a few red wedding bottles left, though they’re tiring and nothing stellar. 94 Mondavi Napa and 97 St. Clement cabs. We poured a 6L of 86 Caymus Special Selection, but haven’t had it since.
The first day I was old enough to buy alcohol, I bought a bottle of 1961 Figeac at the liquor store. As I walking out of the store, the bag broke and the bottle hit the sidewalk and smashed. I was stunned. Was this going to mark my wine buying life? Well, the manager of the store saw the whole thing and replaced the bottle so tragedy averted.
Nothing like 4 cases, but here are my two:
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Just moved into new house, had some friends over. After several bottles were shared I dropped a full bottle of 95 Pahlmeyer Red on the granite kitchen floor - it exploded and wine was everywhere.
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Few years before that my ex-father-in-law shipped a case of wine to us from his home in France. Poorly packed to say the least, a couple bottles survived, but the box was soaked through with red wine and you could here the glass rattling inside. Seriously, the shipping probably cost more than the lost wine, but it was still a sad loss!