The Hall of Shame
Legendary disappointments, catastrophic tastings and extraordinary pricing failures, preserved for future consideration.
The Hall
Each entry is graded by the Overall Disappointment Index, in Dregs, and awarded a verdict by the Institution’s Standing Committee on Regret.
Inducted 2001Offered at £4,200 per bottle to commemorate the Millennium, the Reserve was described by the Institution’s tasting panel as “warm, wet and faintly municipal.” The accompanying certificate of authenticity was found to be more convincing than the wine, and several panellists asked to keep it.
Inducted 2021An entire dinner of 140 delegates was delayed by eighty minutes while a 1960s decanter was ceremonially rotated, presented and discussed. The wine inside, a modest table red, was served at last in a silence of such depth that the sommelier apologised to nobody in particular.
Inducted 2014The label, heavy and embossed, promised “a conversation between earth and sky.” The wine, upon opening, was found to be the earth’s end of the conversation only, and an extremely brief one. Sales were nonetheless strong in the first year.
Inducted 2026A nine-course tasting menu at which each wine was introduced with a monologue averaging seven minutes. By the fifth course the guests had formed a delegation. By the seventh, a committee. The eighth wine was drunk in a spirit of solidarity.
Inducted 2019During a gala for 600 guests, a ceremonial pour-over of a prized vintage was carried out upon the guest of honour, the head table and, by a series of unfortunate deflections, the string quartet. The vintage was subsequently rated “excellent, wherever it was.”
Inducted 2015Twelve consecutive vintages were assembled by a private collector for what was billed as the finest vertical tasting in a generation. Upon opening, all twelve were found to be the same wine, in the same bottle, under twelve different labels. The collector described the event as “consistent.”
Inducted 2012In the course of a formal blind tasting, all fourteen panellists identified the same fault and agreed upon it with unusual enthusiasm. It was later discovered that the fault was not in the wine but in the room, and in particular the carpet, which had been cleaned that morning.
Inducted 2026Sealed under a glass dome in 1971 and unveiled with ceremony in 2019 for a reserve price of £11,500, the bottle was opened before an audience of 80. The contents were unanimously described as “deliberate.” The dome has since been sold separately and has performed well.
Criteria for induction
The scale of the disappointment, measured in Dregs and the number of people who were told.
The ratio of ceremony to wine, assessed by a Committee that has seen a great deal of ceremony.
The distance between what was paid and what was poured, expressed as a ratio and a sigh.
The likelihood that the incident will be described at a dinner, at length, for the rest of the participants’ lives.
The Overall Disappointment IndexNominate an incident (Members)