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Restaurant couple mistakenly served $2000 Mouton 1989 after ordering $18 Pinot

• leephillips 6y ago
  The not-surprise surprise: the wall-street posers who ordered the Mouton but were served the Pinot couldn’t tell the difference.
  • jfengel 6y ago
    I'm glad the couple at least enjoyed it. I got to try the Mouton last year; not the 89, but even with a more recent vintage, the difference was instantly obvious. That tasting was blinder than most: during the Marathon du Medoc, where we sampled two dozen wines over the course of 26 miles, right at their chateaux. Many were fantastic, but even so, the Mouton stood out. And I didn't realize until later which one it was: it was 20 miles in on a very hot day, and I was rather bleary-eyed by that point. I tasted it and my notes are quite clear how much I loved it, and only later synched my notes up with the wines along the course.
    • leephillips 6y ago
      It sounds as if the restaurant, and everyone else, handled the situation well.
• jfengel 6y ago
  That's precisely why wines are uncorked at the table, rather than being decanted. That's that whole ceremony with inspecting the bottle and sniffing the cork (to check for cork taint). And cork taint is a lot more likely on a 30-year-old bottle with a natural cork. That ceremony seems officious and silly on an ordinary bottle of wine, but it's there for a reason. It's weird that a restaurant like Balthazar would dispense with it.
  • leephillips 6y ago
    I was surprised at that detail, too. I’ve never seen wine decanted at a restaurant. The ceremony is a bit silly with ordinary wine because they all use synthetic corks now. But almost no one knows why they are being asked to smell the cork or taste the wine, anyway.