the accidental gift

A friend dropped by our house for a holiday party and, like many of the other guests, brought a bottle of wine as gift, which I deposited with the others at the bar. The friend stayed for a drink or two and then left. Eventually his wine was opened. One of the guests, well versed in wine, saw the bottle and nearly fainted. That, he told us, is a remarkable and coveted bottle, worth about $300. He took pictures of the wine with his cell phone to send to fellow geeks.

The friend who gave us this wine is very generous, but I’m pretty sure this was a mistake. He cannot have intended to give us this rare and expensive bottle. But it’s gone now, and we can’t afford to replace it. He hasn’t said anything about it. Should I? How can I make it up to him?

—Empty Bottle

Dining Out says: If your friend is an avid collector, this is probably his way of spreading the holiday cheer. He may be insulted if you bring up the cost of the label or ask him if he made a mistake when he selected the bottle off a shelf in his dimly lit wine cellar.

Perhaps you can reciprocate his generosity by inviting him over for a post-holiday gourmet meal and cracking open some bubbly—preferably Veuve, Moet, or Tattinger.

Dr. Sigmund Fraud says: $300? That’s nothing. I once had a fling with the beautiful daughter of an international arms trader who let his free-spirited offspring have the run of large estate in Switzerland. The grounds featured a grand topiary maze, a horse stable, a huge heated garage where Daddy housed his Ferraris, Bentleys, and Bugattis, a private marina on Lake Lucerne, a helipad, screening room, Olympic-sized pool surrounded with statues smuggled from an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, a greenhouse where he grew 14 different strains of potent marijuana, and an observatory.

There were servants of all kinds—chauffeurs, maids, masseuses, chefs, the whole bit—all paid extravagant salaries and sworn to secrecy. He also had a wine cellar. So one night we were skinny-dipping in the pool, smoking a fat joint of some bizarre Dutch weed, listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played by the staff pianist on the grand Steinway on the veranda, when she says, “I’m thirsty.” We pulled on our robes and headed down to the wine cellar. I could hardly see the labels because it was so dark, and because I was so baked I mistook my own hand for a spider at one point. Anyway, we grabbed a couple bottles that were sitting out on a table and headed up to the observatory to make love beneath the Milky Way. In the morning, we realized we’d consumed two bottles of Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Turns out the old man had pulled them out because he was going to send them off for auction because he didn’t like the taste. Those bottles go for about $24,000 a piece. Now, that’s just a drop in the bucket to a guy like that, but still, it’s a lot of money, right? Do you think we admitted our indulgence to him? No, sir.

I say the holidays are too special to worry about upsetting anyone who can afford a $300 bottle of wine in the first place. Don’t bring it up, but if it comes up and your generous friend is upset, remind him that Christmas should be a time for him to remember that no matter how lucky he has it, there’s some son of a bitch out there who has riches he can only dream of.

Honest Abe says: Go ahead and tell him. You obviously are troubled by it, whether he is or not (and maybe he is too); dispel that tension by telling him about the guy taking pictures with his phone. Make him laugh. And hope he doesn’t ask you to replace the bottle.

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