No, but they are free to put whatever they might want for sale. There are plenty of crappy wines without a visible irregularity – and I still wouldn’t buy them.
IMO, they did their inspection and posted a bottle note along with a picture. Many auctions out there don’t even do that.
Id say for a retailer that puts over 1,000 new bottles on the shelf every week, their QC is pretty solid.
The answer is no, there is no chance a human could possibly want a 2022 bottle with that ullage. There really is only one valid explanation of how this bottle came to be, and it has been made (and unfairly criticized).
I may be giving away a secret, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that winebid receives a whole lot of bottles it can’t sell. Maybe this particular bottle shouldn’t have been put up for sale (though, with the photo, the condition is there for any potential buyer to see), but it’s one bottle, out of thousands I assume they sell every week.
If the cork was punctured, did they disclose that? Did they even care to notice it, given that they apparently thought nothing of listing a 2022 wine with a significant amount of wine missing? It’s not the first time they would have listed a coravined wine that passed their inspection process.
I’ve been a victim of this. I could go on and on on that subject. But its really besides to point in this case.
Without reasonable explanation of the condition of the bottle, the retailer appears as though they are asleep at the wheel.
I know WineBid removed the bottle already so it doesn’t matter….
Fwiw-
Merry Edwards Pinots usually have a foil capsule, but the bottle in question didn’t appear to have one. All ME’s press photos for the 2022 Olivet Lane have a red capsule, which appears to have been removed (edit- or never applied) in this case.
I once bought a suspect bottle of Mazis Chambertin with bad ullage for ~$35 from a scratch and dent/final sale bin at a local liquor store. If it had been vinegar, as I suspected, I would have shrugged. It turned out to be lovely.
If the emptor has all the info necessary to caveat, where’s the harm? Again, I am not seeing the issue here
On this we agree. My question assumed that the item provided all the explanation necessary to make a decision.
The original comments that the OP has conveniently deleted presented a declaration about the bottle without any physical evidence to back up the accusation. The commentary- like the title of the post- was never a discussion but rather a judgmental demand without facts to back it up.
Anyone has a right to post something like that- just as I have a right to call it out as trolling. The topic itself is actually an interesting one to consider, it was the tone I objected to. And I never asked for anything to be censored or removed. All that was self-censoring by someone who wanted to backtrack (and for very good reason.)
My goodness! That lazy bottling line must have forgotten to add the capsule in addition to not completely filling up the bottle! That’s the only possible explanation for the condition of this bottle!
Next we’re going to find out the bottling line happened to use a cork with a hole in it for some reason.
Here’s a simple solution I believe all (except maybe one?) of us would agree on:
Just as auction houses note seepage, damaged labels, and fill levels, they should make note on the rare occasion when there are pinholes in the top of a cork. I’ve unknowingly purchased obviously coravin’ed bottles a couple times now, and in those scenarios absolutely did not feel that “all relevant information” had been shared with me.
Of course they should be free to sell coravin’ed bottles, and buyers should be free to buy them, but we should expect transparency on this rather than having to use our own deductive reasoning.
All I know is that “someone” seems to be protesting a little too much. Makes me wonder about motive.
I have no horse in this race, but when you start speaking about a company’s business practices in a way that it sounds like you have some level of influence over them, it’s not wise. As someone who is in the business, I get super annoyed when people start saying things that are 100% not accurate about how things actually work in the wine trade.
Not knowing specifically how Winebid’s operations work, but having worked for 2 different auction houses, it’s not uncommon for things to be reviewed after listing them. Something gets missed, and questions get raised internally about the lots since lotting an auction is not an easy process. Notes get combed through afterward looking for inconsistencies. It’s a lot easier to list something and then take it down after the fact as opposed to adding it once the auction is opened. I can’t say why they took it down, but both houses that I worked for would remove lots if something was amiss.
If there are pinholes inconsistent with the small holes present in the top of some capsules, totally agree that is an issue. The tricky thing is that many capsules already have such pinholes. It would add a whole new layer of needed knowledge, plus the continued risk that the unscrupulous would just insert the coravin through an existing capsule hole. Still- agreed that if anything seems untoward, there should be disclosure, or not selling the bottle at all.
On Coravin in particular, I actually went to school (K-12) with one of the guys who was part of the development of that product. He told me years ago that it was never intended the product would be useful as a way to test integrity of a wine and then let that bottle remain unopened long term. Early on, there was some speculation in the marketplace that old bottles could be coravin-ed as a way to test them, and if found sound could be resold at a premium. That idea evaporated pretty fast after one broker did a test on a large sample of bottles and found out that the bottles really did need to be opened within a few weeks- and the sooner the better.
And so on that basis, if a bottle has been corarvined or is strongly suspected to have been so- then I do not think it should be offered for sale at all. And if I ever had a client try to sneak one by me when I was appraising/brokering a collection, that would be on my short list of reasons to permanently drop a client.
I never had a disagreement with you about the Coravin issue. It was more about the tone/approach and the fact that ullage alone does not tell the tale. I worked ITB in college and it is not uncommon for a young bottle of wine to have ullage like that. It is certainly not something you see every day, but it does happen. I have not ever had the bottle you listed before, but if it is something a bit rarer then it would not be unusual for someone to sell it and someone to buy it. 2022 seems awfully young for such a thing, but rare older bottles that are clearly more for show than consumption are auctioned on a regular basis. As long as conditions are disclosed, I have no issue.
I think both @Cris_Whetstone and @Neal.Mollen are correct in their own ways here.
With truly full and complete disclosure, it is theoretically fine for someone to list a product for auction and for someone to purchase it, even if there are glaring red flags about the item, like a bottle of 2022 California pinot that is 80% full (and if they had disclosed the foil being missing and any Coravin hole, if there was one).
But also, if you are a reputable auction site, I don’t think that you want to be the place that lists absolutely anything just because you make full disclosure.
Winebid doesn’t want to be listing half full bottles, fake bottles, unidentifiable bottles, bottles that look like they are probably ruined, just because they give a bunch of disclosures and disclaimers. They want customers to feel like the things they buy on there are legit and at least usually products worth buying. One or two bad experiences can be enough to lose a good customer permanently. So no surprise they took this listing down, and never should have listed it in the first place.
Agreed. And I suspect that is why the bottle was pulled. Just not worth it
IMO it’s more of an ethics issue of listing obviously faulty bottles. Transparency is important, but I’ve seen too many bottles with absolutely horrible fills (old or young) and white wines that are obviously completely oxidized and undrinkable. I think those wines should never be offered by a reputable site for sale, no matter how accurate the description is. The only customers I can think of that would buy such a bottle are (1) uninformed or novices in wine, (2) label hunters that will bring bad wine as an entrance fee to larger tastings, or (3) people looking for an empty bottle to do I-don’t-know-what with.
Again, in my personal opinion all of this is wrong, no matter the transparency or the fact that “they are free to sell whatever they can”. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
As someone who has drafted disclosure for a living for a long time, “so long as it’s disclosed it’s ok” is not good practice.
Well, they often list bottles with low fill, label damage, and the infamous “signs of past seepage,” all of which they disclose. Is this case really any different? I can think of some non-nefarious reasons for low fill, but “signs of seepage” points strongly to a failed closure and high likelihood of damaged wine. But they list it anyway, and nobody seems too bent about it.