A Wine Whine
Las Vegas is a city of opportunity filled with opportunists. It’s also a place where bankrolls burn and dreams crash.
One thing Marieta enjoys doing is bargain hunting. She’s often online trolling for “deals” on the local sale sites. Lots of people do this sort of thing, but Marieta is a real pro. At least a few times a week we buy something across town, she fixes it up, then resells it at a profit. She loves buying and selling and dealing with people. She even likes making small talk. Urghhh! I hate that. Maybe, I’m just lazy.
One reason Las Vegas is such a good city for this kind of thing is there’s lots of fast money–which comes and just as quickly goes. There’s lots of rich people, and also more divorces and splits, and even deaths (retirees passing away). So, “fire sales” are common. That’s another term for buying something really cheap.
Yesterday, Marieta saw a large estate in North Las Vegas that was selling 100+ bottles of wine for a “lot” price, which meant buying the entire collection. Price: $200!
The last thing I need is more wine, but a bargain is a bargain, There’s also some history worth noting here: About 3 years ago, Marieta found a wine fridge online for $75 (100 bottle capacity). When we arrived, the lady said her husband recently passed away and she doesn’t drink wine. So, not only was the fridge being sold, she would toss in another ~60 bottles of wine (FOR FREE!). Let me help this poor widow!
I looked at the labels and it nearly knocked my sandals off. 1992 Delas Hermitage Domaine Des Tourettes; 1998 Chateau Petrus, She even had the far cheaper Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages, but it was a 1987! Oh, and a bottle of Dom from the ’90s. EVERYTHING for $75! Needless to say, I couldn’t fish the bills out of my picket fast enough. For the next six months, I was drinking $90 bottles of wine like Judas at The Last Supper.
On Thursday, we thought this was deja vu all over again. Marieta saw the ad for a “fine wine” collection. It was a long drive across town, but we expected something really special. Gated community. A $2.3 million house for sale on a half acre (unheard of in Las Vegas). There was a Mercedes and two (2!) Range Rovers in the driveway. Great sign. Obviously, an ugly divorce. Sell the bastard’s wine collection! The house had a customized wine alcove, with about 100 bottles. All we had to do was haul off the entire lot for $200. It was like finding a treasure.
Well, then reality hit.
I check out the labels and to call this collection “shit” would be an insult to shit. At least half of the wine lot was Charles Shaw (a.k.a. “Two Buck Chuck”), which is that trash sold by the tank at Trader Joe’s. Jug wines. Hideous garbage. Hell, even the Yellow Tail was Merlot. A horror show.
I didn’t want to create a disturbance so I feigned some lame excuse about thinking the collection was “white wines,” and then the guy called my bluff and said I could take all the whites for $60. Gee, I haven’t felt this awkward since being hustled by the 11 year old selling girl scout cookies. Like, how can I say NO politely? I fumbled another weak excuse and then whispered to Marieta, “mergem” which in Romanian means “let’s scram.”
I took a few picts of this “wine collection.” I guess you win some…..and you lose some.
