Proving Yet Again That Money Can’t Buy Taste, By Which They Mean It Literally Can’t Buy Taste

Alex Halberstadt extracts some great stories from Manhattan sommeliers for The Faster Times:

After two gangsterish Russians downed several thousand-dollar bottles of champagne, they switched to ’89 Mouton Rothschild, just under $2K per bottle. They emptied one bottle, then another; when I opened a third I realized it was corked. I had more of the wine downstairs and when I headed there one of the men barked at me and demanded to taste from the bottle in my hands. I explained that it was corked, but either he didn’t follow my English or didn’t know what “corked” meant. He sipped the wine and smiled. “The best one yet,” he declared. “The others were too fruity.”

(More, please — these stories are awesome . . .)