McLaren Vale’s Mollydooker winery has withdrawn its press release announcing the loss of AUS$1m of its wine in a forklift accident.
Over the weekend it was extensively reported that a faulty forklift dropped and smashed 461 cases of the 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz, a cult wine that was bound for the US market.
The wine is highly thought of by wine critics and sells for around £135 a bottle in the UK.
All but one case of the bottles, worth over AUS$1m, allegedly fell 20 feet onto the Adelaide Wharf as it was being loaded onto a ship headed for America last Thursday.
‘It was unbelievable, crazy. It was not what I wanted to hear,’ winemaker Sparky Marquis told the Australian press. ‘When they opened up the container they said it was like a murder scene – there was red everywhere – but it smelled phenomenal, they were really impressed with the smell.’
Marquis was reported to have said he was glad that the wine was fully insured and that no one was hurt in the incident, but ‘it’s going to mean a massive shortage of wine.’
In a new release, Mollydooker has announced ‘journalists and other readers should disregard the news release Years of Tears and Sweat and More Than $1 Million Worth of Fine Wine Go Down the Drain, issued 25-Jul-2011 over PR Newswire’.
A revised release ‘will be issued at a later time’, the winery says. It has not been possible to contact Mollydooker for more information.
Written by Panos Kakaviatos
