Flawed bottles are part of the hobby. I’ve had one from WineBid, K&L, and a few retailers that I can’t recall now. You can get a corked bottle buying direct from he winery too. Shit happens.
When’s the last time you got a cooked wine from the winery?
Why not? I think it’s completely reasonable for them to verify storage conditions of wines they sell. Anyone who has proper storage also has a way to verify it. Those who don’t, don’t.
How as a practical matter would you think they can implement that?
Especially for people sending in wines to be sold? or smaller lots, being sold on behalf of someone else, like a very small estate sale?
=====
I think one of the best cues for buyers is to actually look at what has to happen to sell wine. If there are lots of conditions designed to filter out smaller sellers, I think its reasonable to assume that conditions of storage were possibly better. A person selling one bottle of Opus One might have gotten it as a gift where it sat on a kitchen wine rack for a decade. The person selling a solid case likely didn’t get it as a gift, and if they can buy $2500 cases, probably kept it in better conditions. And if an auction house doesn’t have much interest in single bottles (excepting the Le Pin’s etc. of the world) that’s probably a useful signal for those who think it might differentiate the storage conditions.
No issues with winebid but I prefer KL as the selection is better.
Have gotten some good stuff, then some problem stuff that had undisclosed issues of bottle condition. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it came from the Napa warehouse fire.
To be clear, I have no knowledge of that. And they took back the unopened wines with undisclosed conditions.
I’ve purchased a number of old white Burgs ('90, '95) and Bordeaux ('53, '59, '61, '66, '70) in the last 8 months. Paid slightly to well below fair market value. All excellent to outstanding except for several corked bottles.
Wow, that’s a ridiculous rate of bad bottles. Were most of them really old? Or maybe a lot of that 30% was from cork taint rather than bad handling? I can’t think of any other reason not to blame Winebid. It’s extremely clear that they don’t care at all how the wines have been stored.
I’ve had very good luck with Winebid over the years but I have noticed a higher rate of misses on purchases in more recent years. I’d guess that more poorly stored wine has been making its way into the market.
Or maybe your palate has gotten more perceptive.
Exactly. But I’ll take it one step further. I can prove up purchase and storage history for every bottle of wine I’ve bought since ~2001 (when I turned 21). Emails, receipts, my cellar conditions (and storage facility bills prior to my cellar) are at my fingertips. I don’t suppose I’m alone in this.
Fact is, there is nearly zero verification of collections (unless they’re the cornerstone of a particular auction and the auction co picked the wine up themselves) done by many auction houses. It stinks for both the buyer AND the sellers who HAVE properly stored their wines. The guy who stored his wine in the pantry gets the same hammer prices as the guy who spent the money building a cellar, storing at a facility or buying wine fridges.
Note - I didn’t say someone without controlled storage shouldn’t be able to sell. They just shouldn’t realize the same prices as the people who do.
People come in to the store where I work quite a bit with old wine that they’d like to unload. Usually it’s inherited. The problem is that in the process of emptying and selling the house with proper storage, they’re often too busy to think about the wine for a while, and most people have no idea how important proper storage is. I’ve seen some pretty sizable collections, including case quantities of some wines, that have been ruined. It’s very sad. I’m sure people in the auction business see this many, many times more than I do in the course of a year. Unless you’re verifying storage somehow and opening some bottles to check their condition, there’s no way to expect sound bottles. A place like Winebid that doesn’t care to do any of that will automatically be selling a lot of cooked wine.
I have had very good luck buying younger wines but very bad luck with older, plus 8 years old, wine. Usually from another country.