What’s the most egregious thing you have seen done while serving wine?

I was at a party recently where the hostess had a variety of low priced wines out for guests. Many different wineries, varietals, and vintages. She had a wine dispenser similar to the one shown below next to the bottles. I don’t know what was in there when I arrived, but I noticed that whenever the dispenser ran low, she just opened a random bottle of whatever was handy and dumped it in. People kept drinking her custom meritage blend. Unreal.

What’s the worst offense you’ve witnessed?

Wine snobs.

Yea but was the blend any good?.

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The boss took us to lunch at a Chinese restaurant and ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter didn’t bother to remove the foil, just pulled the cork out of the bottle tearing right through the foil, left the foil in place and poured the wine.



These are what are known as First World problems.

(If that had been a pre-1990 wine with a lead foil, I would be upset.)

Glasses lined up for a decent $30ish white wine. Hostess drops an ice cube in each glass and pours.

Somm gripped the bottle of Burgundy between his upper thighs in order to free both hands to remove the cork. I’ve stopped letting somms open my bottles.

We were out at a wine dinner at a long closed restaurant in Toronto. At the end of the night the chef came out so we offered her some wine. She picked up a decanter and started chugging - the decanter was far from full, but still…

Was invited to a dinner at the home of a friend of a friend. Was told to bring wine and all guests sort of splurged and brought decent to expensive wine. The host seemed to put the wines away in the kitchen, and would only serve the cheap wine that they had prepared to serve. Essentially swapping cheap wine for more expensive wine that they intended to drink on their own. Guests and I all sort of saw what was happening and I went to the kitchen and grabbed my 2 bottles I brought and opened them. The rest of the night, we tore through everything that we had brought.

Surely not Lynn Crawford at Truffles?

OK, so far you are the winner

Well it was pre-1990. This happened sometime in the late 80’s, but it is something I’ll sure never forget!

Arranged to take a flight of wines to a nice restaurant that normally did not permit BYO. We were seated and had our bottles sitting out since we didn’t have an opener. The waiter confidently strode over, grabbed a bottle, and begins to quickly open it while introducing himself. The cork immediately comes apart at which point he looks at the label, a '78 La Lagune IIRC, and the color drained out of his face. We did manage to rescue the cork and he let us open the rest of them.

Decades ago my parents and were driving in the North of England and stopped at a road side hotel for lunch. Dad had ordered a bottle of claret (I forget what but know it was one needing decanting). We were horrified to see the waiter walking down the dining room to our table swinging his arms and the bottle jauntily. Words were exchanged and a different, less fragile, wine selected.

If you don’t have a story involving someone’s genitals you either have not worked at a winery or your story isn’t coming up to the standards of what I would consider egregious.

“Serving” not “making”, totally different Sir.

This:
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Jim could be referring to a winery tasting room… Ha!

ETA: and, genitals and wine making (grape crushing…) sound like stories beyond egregious.

Great stories. I was at a restaurant where everyone had brought a wine. They were wildly different - older Barolo, Burgundy, Bordeaux, some Napa wines and a few Rieslings. Everyone had something or another in their glass when the chef came out and asked if we’d like to come back and see the fish that just came in and maybe have some of it as sashimi before he started getting orders. It was a big opah and maybe a half hour out of the water. So we went back and all agreed that we’d love to let him do what he thought best, which turned out to be raw, drizzled with olive oil and some salt.

But in those few minutes, a waiter topped off everyone’s glass. The wines were kind of lined up so he grabbed the first one and topped up with that. People ended up with blends of whatever they had in the glass initially and whatever 1996 Leoville las Cases was needed to top off their glass.