COVID Lockdown - Good Wine/Food Stories

[Chuck]

With a decent slab of the country under lockdown again maybe we need some fun reading/interesting wine/food stories to pass the time. So you are invited to share wine stories, anecdotes etc be they funny, sad, enlightening or whatever.

For me it was a couple of decades ago when we were living in Adelaide. At a wine auction I bought a bottle of wine I'd heard a lot about - Penfolds 1962 Bin 60A. Cost was about $400 (a lot of money in those days) and it looked in perfect nick. Scrambling for a good excuse told partner it was my birthday present to myself. That went down like a lead balloon as we had young kids, a mortgage and only 1.5 wages coming in. Soon after someone offered $1,000 for it so I saw this as redemption and the opportunity to buy some good wines we could not usually afford. All was good until the next Xmas when I was reading an article on the 100 greatest wine in the history of the world. It was ranked 7th. I choked on the cheap red I was drinking. Not sure what it's selling for now. Last I heard was $7,000 but that was a while ago.

Any other good stories out there?

[Mahmoud Ali]

Your story reminds me of the time an importer of Australian wine here in Edmonton, Canada, brought a 1982 Penfold's Bin 820 to a restaurant tasting. He told me it was an auction purchase and I have to say It was the best Australian wine I have ever tasted.

Mahmoud.

[GraemeG]

About 20 years ago I bought at auction a 71 Bin 389, which was exquisite when I drank it later that year. I see @ Langtons last week bidding was $300+ or something. Good grief.

I drank '55 Yquem a few years ago which still had it's original A$17 price sticker on it...

I also regret not buying any of the 1965 Lindemans 3100/3110 HRBs at auction either. Late 90s these were $100-something when current release '94 Bin 389 was about $20 in the shops. What are they now, $3k?
Missed chances...

[phillisc]

Just once.
I was at an auction in Adelaide in about 1984 and there were 3 single bottle lots of 55 Wynns Michael. I bought one for $180!! (more than a weeks wages at the time and 9 times the price of a 78 Grange).
Thankfully, apart from the auctioneer, there were not a lot of serious wine punters in attendance, it was a charity auction IIRC.
I drank it the following year and it was glorious.

A couple of close calls
Despite buying a reasonable amount of 82 John Riddoch at $11 a bottle, there was a sealed dozen in a wooden case that only went for $30 a bottle, circa 1990
Equally, a sealed dozen of impeccable 71 Grange for $100 bottle was probably a missed buy...an Adelaide retailer brought that one and made 1000%.

Have not seen a 55 for a fair while but think Sue Hodder tweeted a few years back that a pair brought $6 grand.

Cheers Craig

[Alan Foo]

2 bottles of 1959 Ch Latour purchased in Jan 2001 from Ultimo Wine Sydney for the astronomical price of $544 each. Drank one bottle in 2002 (Rich, with berry and tobacco character, it shows layers of ripe fruit, tannins that go on and on at the finish. A classic vintage). Sold the second bottle at auction for $1800 in 2003.

Alan

[phillisc]

With a decent slab of the country under lockdown again maybe we need some fun reading/interesting wine/food stories to pass the time. So you are invited to share wine stories, anecdotes etc be they funny, sad, enlightening or whatever.

For me it was a couple of decades ago when we were living in Adelaide. At a wine auction I bought a bottle of wine I'd heard a lot about - Penfolds 1962 Bin 60A. Cost was about $400 (a lot of money in those days) and it looked in perfect nick. Scrambling for a good excuse told partner it was my birthday present to myself. That went down like a lead balloon as we had young kids, a mortgage and only 1.5 wages coming in. Soon after someone offered $1,000 for it so I saw this as redemption and the opportunity to buy some good wines we could not usually afford. All was good until the next Xmas when I was reading an article on the 100 greatest wine in the history of the world. It was ranked 7th. I choked on the cheap red I was drinking. Not sure what it's selling for now. Last I heard was $7,000 but that was a while ago.

Any other good stories out there?

Chuck, 12+grand at the 2019 Barossa wine auction I think
Cheers Craig

Sorry Chuck...just looked it up...$21 grand!!

[kenzo]

The small local supermarket in a little town in Akita prefecture (northern Japan) in which I lived for a few years in the late 90s had 1988 and 1990 Dom Perignon on clearance for 5,000yen a bottle. It was a delicious mid-week quaffer, Likewise I bought Ch Margaux Pavillon Blanc of the same vintage for the same price at the time. Had a corkscrew with me but no glasses so my date and I drank it straight from the bottle on a riverbank late at night. Classy, I know. The same bottle goes for around 10 times the price now.
When I returned to Japan in the early 2000s, a local mom and pop wine shop at 3 cases of Ch Musar from 1977, 78, and 79 for the same price (!). I bought as many as my poor salary could afford me - they were superb. I went back many years later with a wad of cash in my pocket but alas they were all long since gone...
Another local in the suburbs in Tokyo had a stash of DRC La Tache etc for a few hundred each in the same era. I wasn't willing to stretch for them even though I knew they were a great buy...I could almost have paid for my entire current cellar of the back of returns on those these days!

[Chuck]

[quote="kenzo" Had a corkscrew with me but no glasses so my date and I drank it straight from the bottle on a riverbank late at night. Classy, I know[/quote]

Better to have a corkscrew and no glasses than glasses and no corkscrew. Hope you had the wine in a brown paper bag... sorry that's USA where in some states you can't drink on the street. The bag is to disguise it believe it or not. We were in Virginia a few years ago (you could just about hear the duelling banjo if you listened carefully) at an obscure Shakespearean playhouse on a hot summer's night and at intermission we tried to take a couple of cold ones outside. No you don't said the 6'6" 250lb guy at the door. We retreated back inside.

And that I believe is the reason you see booze in brown paper bags in US movies.

[Ian S]

Isn't the brown paper bag a thing in Australia as well (or at least in Northern Territory)? It's been a while so I can't be confident I'm recalling it correctly

[phillisc]

Isn't the brown paper bag a thing in Australia as well (or at least in Northern Territory)? It's been a while so I can't be confident I'm recalling it correctly

And in Adelaide too...was in a cbd bottle shop on the weekend...a couple of punters down on their luck...brown paper bags all round.
Cheers Craig

[mjs]

I also regret not buying any of the 1965 Lindemans 3100/3110 HRBs at auction either. Late 90s these were $100-something when current release '94 Bin 389 was about $20 in the shops. What are they now, $3k?

Similarly with the Bin3100/3110. I did manage to buy a few at High Y cellars back in the day (80's generally) for what, 30 bucks? Absolutely beautiful wine. Think we drank most of them at Fleurie, Iain Hewitson's wonderful byo restaurant.

Drug money now ...

also a few bottles of '71 Grange at Gatehouse Cellars in about 1986 for $35/b

[JamieBahrain]

Last month I flew from Hong Kong to Melbourne with 100kg of the finest Barolo. Tax free value of about 15,000 AUD. I had receipts and felt I’d be reasonably received by Customs. However, Dan Andrew’s Gold Standard of Hotel Quarantine had me worried. No, not for catching COVID, I was fully vaccinated with two shots of Pfizer. I was worried about Dictator Dan confiscating my wine as you can not order wine in Victorian hotel quarantine other than from the hotel’s marked up wine list.

Anyways on arrival government staff looked visibly frightened at times dealing with the “diseased returnees”. Declared a few cases of wine and the Customs guys waved me through with a “Welcome Home”. I guess doing paperwork with me not worth getting risk?

Wow! Amazing. Then the dread set in as I could see an X-Ray machine set up by the Victorian government. I put my dozen boxes through from two trolleys and the comments were “Geez that’s a lot of wine for two weeks mate” .

Lovely. Another 100 bottles of Piedmont’s finest for the cellar minus the six I drank in quarantine.

[GraemeG]

Two weeks? Six bottles? Abstemious indeed!

[Hunter]

First lockdown wine.
Henschke Julius 2015.
Fresh, zippy. Chalk and lime.
Still a wee lass.

IMG_20210722_180358_765.jpg

[JamieBahrain]

Two weeks? Six bottles? Abstemious indeed!

I made the bathroom into a makeshift cellar. I didn’t turn the air con on so left the room chilled in a Melbourne winter. I drank older Barolo but left all these young guns alone. Despite a fashion for drinking them young these days to me it’s an absurdity. Happy to partake in AFD’s.

The Vic gov banning the purchase of wine from outside and being stuck buying Jacob’s Creek equivalents for $50 was a bitter reintroduction to Victoria. Couldn’t wait to leave.

[shauno]

My sister moved from Syd to Canberra a few months ago, so all her wine from my dad’s cellar (about 3 cases of quaffers plus a few “special” bottles kept on a shelf in a vintec) went down to Canberra too.

She sent a pic this week of a wine opened mid-week to go with a random dinner, they picked this because they couldn’t remember where it came from.. but apparently it was VERY NICE!

31AC198E-849E-4F18-98F2-E1C37F1CE41D.jpeg

So it turns out one of the bottles I gave my old man for his 70th ended up on the wrong shelf