How we grade
Condition, in plain English.
Every listing carries a fill level, a label and capsule condition, a packaging note and a provenance tier. Those words mean something specific, and a scale nobody publishes is not a scale — it is decoration. Here is ours, including the grades we would rather not have to use.
Fill level
Where the wine sits in the bottle
The single most useful thing you can know about an older bottle. Wine seeps past the cork slowly over decades; how far it has fallen tells you how it was stored and how much risk you are taking. Bordeaux is graded against the shoulder, as shown. Burgundy and Rhône bottles have sloping shoulders with no landmarks, so those are measured in centimetres from the bottom of the cork — and we record the number rather than a word.
| Into neck | Wine sits up in the neck. On anything with age this is exceptional and usually means cold, still storage its whole life. |
| Base of neck | At the point where the neck meets the shoulder. Excellent for a mature bottle; entirely normal for a young one. |
| Very top shoulder | A few millimetres of loss. Expected on wines of twenty years and more, and no cause for concern. |
| Top shoulder | Normal for a bottle of thirty years or more. Most well-kept older Bordeaux sits here. |
| Upper shoulder | Acceptable with age, and worth a closer look at the cork and capsule. We say so in the notes when it changes what we would pay. |
| Mid shoulder | Meaningful loss. Drinkable bottles live here, but the risk is real and the price should reflect it. We will tell you that plainly. |
| Low shoulder | High risk. We rarely buy at this level and never sell it without saying exactly what it is. |
| Below low shoulder | We do not sell these as drinking bottles. If one is listed, it is for the label, the format or the history, and the listing says so. |
Fill is always read against age. Into-neck on a 2015 is unremarkable; on a 1961 it is worth crossing a room for.
The grade
One letter, so you can scan a list
| A | As good as the wine gets at its age Excellent label and capsule, fill high for the vintage, packaging as it left the château where that applies. Nothing about the bottle argues with what the file says. |
| B | Honest, well-kept, lightly worn Very good label, sound capsule, fill normal for the age. The kind of bottle a careful collector has owned for twenty years. Most great mature wine is grade B, and it should be. |
| C | Cosmetically marked, and priced for it Good label with visible wear, a nicked or scuffed capsule, or fill toward the lower end of normal. The wine can be perfect; the presentation is not, and the price says so. |
Label & capsule
What the outside of the bottle tells you
| Label — excellent | Clean and bright, no tears, no significant soiling. Reads as it did the day it was bottled. |
| Label — very good | Minor bin soiling, faint scuffing or slight wear at the edges. Nothing missing, nothing illegible. |
| Label — good | Visible wear: scuffing, soiling, a nick or a small tear. Complete and legible, but the bottle has lived. |
| Capsule — excellent | Intact and unmarked, no corrosion, no signs of seepage past it. |
| Capsule — nicked | Cosmetic damage to the foil. Common on older bottles moved more than once; it does not by itself indicate a problem beneath. |
| Signs of seepage | Always called out in the notes when present, whatever the grade. A stained capsule interior or a sticky neck is information a buyer is owed. |
Packaging
Original wood, and why we mention it
| OWC — original wooden case | The case the wine left the property in, still holding the wine it was made for. It supports provenance and it is worth real money at resale. |
| OWC, intact | The case is unopened or complete with its original banding and lid. We state intact separately from present, because the difference is worth paying for. |
| OCB — original cardboard box | The producer’s own carton. The same idea as an OWC in regions that ship in card. |
| Original carton | The producer’s packaging for a single bottle or small format. |
| Loose | No original packaging. Common, and entirely fine — it simply is not a case sale, and we do not charge as though it were. |
Provenance confidence
How much we can actually prove
Four tiers, and we use all four. A merchant whose entire inventory is “verified” is telling you about their vocabulary, not their wine.
Verified verified
We hold documentation we have checked ourselves — original purchase records, cellar records, or an unbroken chain we can evidence — and, where the wine warrants it, third-party authentication. The file names who verified it.
Documented documented
We know where it came from and hold records of the acquisition and storage, though not a complete chain back to release. This is the honest description of most excellent mature wine.
Represented represented
The seller told us its history and nothing we inspected contradicts them, but we cannot evidence it independently. We price accordingly and say so on the listing rather than rounding it up.
Unknown unknown
We do not know the history. This tier exists because pretending otherwise is how the category earned its reputation. If a bottle is here, it is labelled here.
Every parcel carries its file
Condition is one page of it. The rest — where the wine came from, how it was stored, who inspected it, and every movement since it reached Carlsbad — sits on the listing for each parcel, and is printed in the box when it ships.