I won a 1900 Margaux at a wine and food weekend in 1998. It had allegedly been recorked at the chateau. Pontallier and his assistant open the bottle, taste it, and then re cork and capsule with a new label that was embossed with “recondition aux chateau” on the label. It was refilled with a similar vintage from their cellar.
We opened it New Years Eve 2000. Wonderful for 2 1/2 hours and then began to fade. I still have the bottle.
Broadbent , while a great great man was duped in the Kirniawan fiasco. I’d get someone to authenticate it before buying!
In the 1970s, there were a number of US collectors- many of them in Texas- who bought significant quantities of pre-phylloxera Lafite from various London auction sales, including the famous Glamis Castle auctions. Lafite did a US tour a few years later, going around the country to recork and recondition bottles for collectors. They had a nice long stop in Texas during that run, and they brought with them many library wines- including old vintages like this- to do the topping off on bottles that were checked and found to be sound.
Any Bordeaux this old is a rarity worthy of questioning- but when it comes to the late 19th Century, Lafite is the bottling you are most likely to find from a US cellar because such a concentration of them came to the US in the manner I described above at a given point in time.
If anyone is interested in bidding, I would call and ask for provenance. Given the reputation of the collectors who brought a lot of these bottles stateside, that provenance should be proudly advertised. Also ask when the bottle was recorked and if it was done when Lafite-Rothschild did their America tour. None of this is a guarantee- but if you can establish that this bottle was in one of those well-regarded cellars and recorked here, that is very good news.
There was a story about a local collector here named Haskell Norman. He was invited by Hardy Rodenstock to a tasting of the 1865 Lafite. Everyone who came raved about it until they got to Haskell, who said, I’ve had this wine 12 times and this bottle is completely different. Sadly Haskell is not around to help out.