A California Wine Company Had to Destroy 2,000 Bottles of Wine After Illegally Aging Them at the Bottom of the Ocean

Food and Wine website ^ | Aug 15, 2023 | By Jelisa Castrodale

[Dead Corpse]

$500 a bottle?

2000 bottles?

I’d be willing to bet a few cases of those never made it to the water treatment plant to be destroyed...

[MD Expat in PA]

I don’t think it’s a marketing ploy. Not when you look at all the other stuff they got busted for. I think they were just flying by the seat of their pants and hoping to cash out before anybody noticed.

I agree. They were flying by the seat of their pants for sure. And I have to wonder if sea water could have seeped through the corks. I'm not sure I'd want to drink it.

[catnipman]

let’s include the REST of the story:

“On top of that, the company sold the wine without a business license, without an ABC alcohol sales permit, and it was collecting taxes from each purchase without paying the required taxes to the state.”

so, these guys were total crooks from the get-go ...

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

If they had an interest in keeping track of them they could have filled out the paperwork to make sure nothing happened.

Because paperwork automatically prevents anything from happening to your stuff.

I wonder, do you ever listen to what comes out of your mouth?

[dljordan]

“Since when do you got to get government permission to do everything???”

A loooong time. Our government is huge and constantly expands.

[SFConservative]

LOL!! Very well done ...

[discostu]

In this case paperwork does something VERY important. It means that if something happens it’s the fault of whoever did it. No paperwork means it’s on you. We’ll go back to the dredging, if you’ve got the paperwork so ACE SHOULD know about your barrels and they hit your barrels and lose them or break their equipment they have to pay you for your stuff and fix their equipment themselves. Same scenario no paperwork too bad about your barrels and here’s the bill for the dredger.

I wonder do you even bother to think. Really, ocean floor world is complicated. Everybody that does stuff in the ocean has a vested interest in knowing what’s down there and TELLING what’s down there. Makes everybody’s life easier. Really, just a little bit of thinking would allow you to realize that.

[zeugma]

The people who run this banana republic are lucky as hell that the proles that populate this land aren't more violent.

There are a lot of scum in government that that need hemp neckties.

I'd applaud if there were a thousand Dregas across the land, or perhaps some "Unintended Consequences".

[MrRelevant]

Then of course the wine company will simply move to Texas like the rest lol .. and submerge their wine in the Gulf of Mejico..

[discostu]

And if they follow the same path they’ll get in the same trouble.

[Ronald77]

i have a government permit to take a sh_t. enviromental hazard.

[BradyLS]

Zackly. Probably all but a few were saved for research purposes.

[Ronald77]

wonder what gives them the right to size and destroy private property without a court order?

[Lazamataz]

Looks like they broke all the laws possible. Didn’t have a business license, didn’t have an alcohol permit, collected taxes during sales without sending them up,

Yes, they may well have done those things.

defrauding investors.

Then, suddenly, you make something up from whole cloth.

And you really can’t just put stuff at the bottom of a channel. That’s a navigational hazard. Could catch anchors, anchors could break it spewing stuff in the water. I just finished re-reading Neal Stephenson’s article about underwater cables. The bottom of the ocean is crowded, and paperwork matters.

This is not 'the ocean' per se, this is a channel.

And, do you really think anyone would be stupid enough to locate valuables in a dredging zone or a shipping zone? I'm sure it was much more likely they places the containers in a 6 foot deep location near the shore, most likely near or at a seafront property one of the principals owned.

[Boogieman]

“the destruction of the wine was part of a plea agreement accepted by Ocean Fathom’s founders”

Don’t need a court order if the owners agree to allow it.

[Lazamataz]

Ok, you have to give me high marks for honor. I went to their page, and several of the pictures there make it clear they WERE stupid enough to locate their ‘sea cellar’ way out in the channel. https://www.oceanfathoms.com/lookbook

So I was wrong about that.

However, the channel looks pretty damned big. Odds are they were out of the way, anyway.... but you’re right, without checking, how could they know?

Still, something really bothers me about the whole deal. How much regulation and permits are enough? How many are too many? Wouldn’t it be much better if the government didn’t REGULATE and PERMIT, but instead, INFORM?

“Dear Ocean Fathoms, per your note of 3/14/2022, the location you have chosen seems to be well out of shipping and dredging zones. I hope this information helps you. Have a nice day.”

[discostu]

I didn’t make that up. Read your own article:
“ and aiding and abetting investor fraud. (Azzaretto and Hahn have also been required to pay $50,000 in restitution to that investor.) “

A water way is a water way is a water way. If you’re putting hazards in it you have to chart it. That way everybody knows how to avoid it. The only thing that changes with it being a channel and not the ocean is HOW you chart it.

They put things in the Santa Barbara Channel! That IS a shipping zone AND it gets dredged twice a year. Now they might have found a nice corner that wasn’t in the shipping and dredging lane. But given how little of their homework they did, I think if they did that it was luck more than planning.

[AndyJackson]

If the wine company does it outside the 12 mile limit is there another regulation?

Importing wine without a license?

[Lazamataz]

I didn’t make that up. Read your own article: “ and aiding and abetting investor fraud. (Azzaretto and Hahn have also been required to pay $50,000 in restitution to that investor.) “

Yeeeeahhh... while I concede you didn't make that up, I would also note that in today's legal climate (c.f. Donald Trump), the 'fraud' could be that they cannot deliver on the wine they promised, BECAUSE the authorities seized it.

Things are THAT effed up these days.

[discostu]

Well they should probably start with getting a business license.

Really look at it from the other direction. Instead of the story being that their wine got poured out what if the story was “ACE dredger (which remember your tax dollars paid for) takes millions of dollars worth of damage running into uncharted wine barrels being aged by company that did none of the paperwork”? I think you’d read that story and say “those guys are idiots, hope they’ve got enough assets to pay for a new dredger”.

Hazards in water ways work with very simple rules. If you’re putting them there you need to make sure they’re properly charted. If you do anything bad that happens is on whoever did the bad thing, if you don’t it’s on you. In this case regulating and permitting is how you make people get their hazards (and remember pretty much everything man made is considered a hazard) on the damn charts.

And the government can’t INFORM as you want them to if Ocean Fathoms doesn’t do the paperwork to get their hazard on the chart. That’s how you trigger that “dear government I want to sink some stuff here” “dear sinker, bad spot, try over here”.