Little Deetrane Buys Some Wine

The modern world is fraught with dangers masked as opportunities. Don't believe me? Then you haven't been surfing Craigslist lately or buying things on eBay. If the Romans were around today they would have inserted a mandatory set of exclamation points after their lovely phrase caveat emptor.

In particular, the world of wine offers unusual proof that a fool and his money are indeed easily parted, as the other familiar saying reminds us. As wine lovers, we're always out for a good deal on great wine. Like collectors of many kinds (along with garage sale shoppers, antique store browsers, etc.) the dream of getting a phenomenal wine for a good price lingers in the back of the mind, and makes it far too easy to spend hard earned money on bottles that can sometimes turn out to be just liquid mistakes.

So what knowledgeable but budget-conscious wine lover among us wouldn't have at least considered following in the footsteps of Deetrane, a friend of my fellow wine blogger Neil, who runs the blog Brooklyn Wine Guy?

Deetrane has been posting as a guest on Neil's blog recently telling the fascinating tale of his adventures buying wine off of Craigslist. And if you haven't read them, they are certainly adventures rife with treasure, crime, justice, and moral corruption.

See episode one, in which the protagonist discovers great wine deals on Craigslist and eventually realizes that they are indeed, too good to be true.

Feast your eyes on episode two in which the protagonist is involved in a police sting operation to catch the perpetrator of heinous wine crimes.

Wonder aloud at episode three in which the protagonist lives happily ever after, and seemingly without a scrap of guilt at continuing to drink stolen wine.

These are quite an entertaining series of posts, to be sure. Unfortunately the ending leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, as Deetrane seems perfectly content to continue drinking wine that he knows is stolen, a morally corrupt point of view if I've ever seen one. But don't let that stop you from enjoying the story, even if it ends happily for only one party involved.

Thanks to Jack at Fork and Bottle who told me that the final episode had recently been posted.

Posted by: Alder on March 27, 2007 10:09 PM: Filed under: Ramblings and Rants; Like this post? Share it! Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit

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Comments (4)

Brooklynguy wrote:

03.28.07 at 7:54 AM

Hi Alder,
Thanks for the nod to this series. A question for you, and I am no moral philosopher, nor do I have any interest in defending Deetrane's honor, as he is more than able to do that for himself...but a question nonetheless: why isn't the wine a gift from the restaurant once Dee tried to return it to them, and they refused his offer, instead telling him to keep the wine as a token of their gratitude for helping them catch the thief?

deetrane wrote:

03.28.07 at 8:41 AM

Hi all, deetrane here. My incompetence as a blogger is rearing its head here. Yes, I indeed neglected to mention in my post that I offered to give the wine back to the restaurant. They politely demurred, out of gratitude, they claimed, for my helping to foil the crime (I was also reminded that I had "paid" for the wine, albeit to a theif, and that for them to buy the wine back from me would just increase their losses). The second time I offered to return the wine, I was told that insurance was going to pay for it. The 30 or so bottles that I bought were only part of what was stolen - they counted at least 120 bottles missing. So my offer was sort of impractical.

Alder wrote:

03.28.07 at 9:42 AM

Deetrane,

Your honor is cleared with me. Your multiple attempts to return the bottles did not come through in the piece, nor any of the other details about insurance, etc.

Thanks for the entertaining story.

Arthur wrote:

03.28.07 at 9:44 AM

It still reads like a good piece of detective noir. Good job, Deetrane!
Why do people from the city always have such interesting stories?
I miss the East Coast...