Thanks Rick, we’re looking into a proper storage facility in the city. And Joe, I completely agree…I wish I had more answers. We’ve purchased other units before, and you’d be shocked by what type of personal effects are left in these lockers. It’s amazing. All we could get from the manager of the storage place was that they made many attempts to contact the owner, and was never able to reach him. I’ve come up with my own random theories, but I don’t know what really happened.
I will absolutely look into Cellartracker. I stumbled across them a couple times today.
Honest feedback is that the buyer is rolling a crap shoot. Could be fine or worthless. I would just drink them and enjoy the ride whether it is bumpy or smooth sailing.
I’d try some of them I think, but if all of the wines are of the quality she’s outlined above and they’re in apparent good condition that’s tens of thousands of dollars. Rather a lot of money to just say “eh, don’t worry, just drink them…”.
Are you in Chicago? HDH is very provenance oriented, but there probably are outlets for auctioning/selling these wines with full disclosure (not at tope dollar) particularly if the auction house gets to try a representative sample of the cache
Which is why I suggested talking to an AH. If there’s a couple of bottles per I simply wouldn’t allow them to try a bottle of each wine. Sorry, but that’s over the line. A couple? Maybe… $15k of wine? No.
Like someone said, it’s a crap shoot. I could have very well lied to HDH or anyone else, but I’m not. And from what I gather (from other people I’ve talked to around me) even the best conditions aren’t always a guarantee with some really old wines.
My goal/hope/mission is to find an auction house or buyer who’s interested in taking a look at the collection and taking a risk I guess, based on everything we know. We’d be more than happy to let them open a bottle or two, like Rick said…not have a New Year’s party in there.
You have an interesting challenge there. HDH is good; while their concern about provenance may seem over the top, I have bought from them never been disappointed with quality. Not sure what advice to give you; on the one hand you have relatively small volume (assuming less than 200 bottles from your first post), but the value could be high if quality is good.
There are a number of people in Chicagoland area who might be interested in buying some of your wine, but personally I would prefer to sample to gauge quality before buying. One approach to consider would be to organize an offline where interested people could sample either specific wine or range of wine to get a feel for the quality. For example, if you have a full case of a specific bottling, open one bottle and provide small pours to prospective buyers. Pending quality, determine agreeable price. Wine Searcher provides excellent point of reference for market prices so you can use that as a baseline.
In terms of providing people with a list, you may want to organize a bit more succinctly: group by country, list each bottling as a single row with producer name, vineyard or other designate, year, size, & quantity of bottles. Sort these either by year or producer to make it easy for people to scan and find when returning to view list.
I live in Chicago and would be happy to see what you have and provide some advice. I can put you in touch with some other locals too if you’re interested.
Thanks Mark, I appreciate your suggestion, and that you’re in Chicago! I absolutely need to organize what we have, but it’s a little overwhelming given that I can’t even read the language that many of the bottles are in (french, german, etc). and other various reasons. I reached out to Flickinger yesterday too, and someone from there is supposed to call me next Wednesday. I’m hoping one of their guys will be willing to come and take a look.
You may want to get in contact with Kevin at Knightsbridge Wine Shoppe in Northbrook. I believe they will sell on consignment, or also buy a cellar. He deals in a lot of Burgundy, and may be able to get you in touch with collectors who would be willing to buy from you.
So you purchased a locker at auction right? Was the locker temperature controlled? most storage units aren’t unless this was at an actual wine storage facility.
Charlie, non-wine storage lockers that say ‘temperature controlled’, don’t mean 55º, they generally mean heated (especially in Chicago). Rarely are they air conditioned in the summer. However, most stay pretty cool, depending on the building.
lucky them, the storage facility we use in pasadena is about 75F on a cold day.
I can’t imagine any wine in any storage locker being in good condition if left there for over a year+. That just doesn’t seem plausible. Those things are like garages at times. We don’t even know if it’s an interior locker or one that’s in the exterior which would be even hotter.
Again, this is why Dina should try to find out as much as she can from the storage place and then talk to an auction house. A limited sampling will tell her what’s what, but I’m loath to suggest she just pop one since older wines are very different than what most people drink - I can see someone unfamiliar with truly old wine feeling that a bottles shot when it’s actually OK, just 45 years old. If she can get some folks from here who are local to her to help that would rock too. But at this point, the rest of us are just speculating. The wine might be in great shape, OK shape or totally shot. But with wines that valuable Dina’s best bet is professional advice ideally from people who are looking at the wines.
It’s just puzzling to me who leaves these types of wines in a storage locker and just forgets about them. I can understand some random first growths but Faiveley Musigny? People can’t even try to buy that wine if they wanted to.
I agree… but people are weird. I know of a locker at an offsite place here (real wine storage place) where a guy has all kinds of amazing wines. Every year he comes down and gets… 1 case. He has dozens of cases in there and many of the wines will probably go over the hill before he gets to them.
it’s also possible someone collected those wines and then passed away. Someone else put the entire thing in storage and…
Thanks for weighing in Charlie. It was an interior storage locker, climate controlled at 65 degrees (according to the storage place). Through a few valuable PM’s from this post, I have been able to contact some local experts, and hope to have them come and look at what we have this weekend. To Charlie’s point (and someone else made this comment yesterday), I too am amazed at what people leave behind in these units. My husband has found everything from social security cards to family photo albums to gold to vintage wines.
I really cannot thank you all enough for your comments/advice/support/etc. I totally get how strange my original post may seem, but I promise you I am a regular mom, wife, author, PTA member, and all around decent person who is simply excited over a bottle of $14 malbec.
I will keep you all posted on what feedback we get this weekend!
-Dina
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