After more than two years, Sherry-Lehmann\u2019s long-suffering customers are finally starting to get their wine back.<\/p>\n
The iconic Park Avenue vintner<\/a> \u2013 which shut its doors for good in March 2023 as it failed to renew its liquor license <\/a>after 89 years in business \u2013 famously went silent as hundreds of customers of Wine Caves, its decades-old storage service, clamored in vain for their prize vintages.<\/p>\n Sherry-Lehmann was an institution in New York City for 89 years. Robert Miller<\/p>\n Now, after a flurry of headlines, a pair of FBI raids<\/a> and a drawn-out courtroom battle between Sherry-Lehmann\u2019s owners and its landlord<\/a>, the expensive booze is beginning to trickle out again \u2013 and it\u2019s sweet.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll share one of these bottles with my father, who is 101,\u201d said one Boston-based collector who just secured his stash valued at $80,000 \u2013 including a case of 1982 Petrus and another of assorted prize Bordeaux including Chateau Mouton Rothschild.<\/p>\n \u201cThese were the first serious bottles I bought and I bought them in the 80s,\u201d the collector told The Post, asking not to be identified. \u201cMy father gave me a book by Robert Parker, the most influential wine critic in the world. I saw these two wines had been given 100-point scores by Parker. It was an impulse buy.\u201d<\/p>\n Wine Caves is filled with rare and pricey bottles of Bordeaux like this 1982 Petrus. Shutterstock<\/p>\n During the past several weeks, dozens of other Wine Caves customers have begun to collect their long-lost vintages from the basement of a nondescript office building in Rockland County \u2013\u00a0 the latest bizarre twist in a process that is now being supervised by Sherry-Lehmann\u2019s former landlord.<\/p>\n Hong Kong-based real estate firm Glorious Sun remains Sherry-Lehmann\u2019s biggest creditor \u2013 still owed $5 million in back rent on the corner retail space it occupied at the foot of its glass-and-steel office tower at 505 Park Ave. When the store closed, Wine Caves became unreachable. <\/p>\n Sherry-Lehmann transferred the prize vintages \u2013 some 32,000 bottles worth $16 million, according to court documents \u2013 in 2022 to Blue Hill Plaza, a corporate park in Pearl River, NY \u2013 where most of them have remained to this day, stacked in an air-conditioned basement alongside stacks of computer servers.<\/p>\n Wine Caves\u2019 storage business is based at Blue Plaza Office tower in Pearl River, N.Y. Google Maps<\/p>\n \u201cThe wines there are the highest level in the world,\u201d said Kevin Zraly, author of the \u201cWindows on the World complete Wine Course,\u201d who also taught wine classes at Sherry-Lehmann. \u201cOnly 1% of all wine in the world can age over 5 years and wines being kept at Wine Caves is that 1%.\u201d <\/p>\n Thus far, Glorious Sun has sent 820 letters informing customers that their wine is at Pearl River and asking for proof of ownership. A \u201cminority\u201d of the letters were returned because the customers had moved, Glorious Sun\u2019s attorney Edmund O\u2019Brien told The Post.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next phase is dealing with the difficult cases,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, saying it could take more than a year to locate clients it hasn\u2019t reached. \u201cWe have lots of ideas about how to handle those situations but we are not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Zraly, \u201cA lot of people bought wine from Sherry-Lehmann and forgot about it. Some of the customers may be too old to care or they forgot they have it there.\u201d<\/p>\n In September, things took a bizarre turn when Sherry Lehmann\u2019s Wine Caves storage arm sued Glorious Sun, accusing it of holding the trove of rare Burgundy and Bordeaux \u201chostage\u201d \u2013 and filing for a temporary restraining order that halted the redistribution process for six weeks.<\/p>\n At the time, Glorious Sun had begun returning <\/a>about 1,000 bottles to 13 lucky clients between June and September, according to court filings. On Oct. 14, New York state Judge Thomas Zugibe lifted the restraining order \u2014 and Glorious Sun restarted the \u201claborious\u201d effort, according to court papers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The FBI raided Sherry-Lehmann\u2019s Park Avenue store in 2023. James Keivom<\/p>\n Wine Caves also accused the landlord of grossly underestimating the size of the stash, which it pegged at 300,000 bottles, according to court papers. Glorious Sun countered that a 2023 FBI raid of the Blue Hill facility<\/a> put the count at 32,000. The landlord says it simply wants its space back \u2013 and notes that it\u2019s spending thousands of dollars reaching out to Wine Caves customers.<\/p>\n According to court filings, Wine Caves new majority owner is James Galtieri, a former Sherry-Lehmann supplier who for 20 years was the exclusive US importer for Ch\u00e2teau Lafite Rothschild \u2013 among the most coveted wines in the world with new bottles fetching upwards of $700 each.<\/p>\n