Clients of NYC wine shop Sherry-Lehmann finally getting their wine back — including a stash of Bordeaux worth $80K

After more than two years, Sherry-Lehmann’s long-suffering customers are finally starting to get their wine back.

The iconic Park Avenue vintner – which shut its doors for good in March 2023 as it failed to renew its liquor license after 89 years in business – famously went silent as hundreds of customers of Wine Caves, its decades-old storage service, clamored in vain for their prize vintages.

Now, after a flurry of headlines, a pair of FBI raids and a drawn-out courtroom battle between Sherry-Lehmann’s owners and its landlord, the expensive booze is beginning to trickle out again – and it’s sweet.

“I’ll share one of these bottles with my father, who is 101,” said one Boston-based collector who just secured his stash valued at $80,000 – including a case of 1982 Petrus and another of assorted prize Bordeaux including Chateau Mouton Rothschild.

“These were the first serious bottles I bought and I bought them in the 80s,” the collector told The Post, asking not to be identified. “My father gave me a book by Robert Parker, the most influential wine critic in the world. I saw these two wines had been given 100-point scores by Parker. It was an impulse buy.”

During the past several weeks, dozens of other Wine Caves customers have begun to collect their long-lost vintages from the basement of a nondescript office building in Rockland County –  the latest bizarre twist in a process that is now being supervised by Sherry-Lehmann’s former landlord.

Hong Kong-based real estate firm Glorious Sun remains Sherry-Lehmann’s biggest creditor – still owed $5 million in back rent on the corner retail space it occupied at the foot of its glass-and-steel office tower at 505 Park Ave. When the store closed, Wine Caves became unreachable.

Sherry-Lehmann transferred the prize vintages – some 32,000 bottles worth $16 million, according to court documents – in 2022 to Blue Hill Plaza, a corporate park in Pearl River, NY – where most of them have remained to this day, stacked in an air-conditioned basement alongside stacks of computer servers.

“The wines there are the highest level in the world,” said Kevin Zraly, author of the “Windows on the World complete Wine Course,” who also taught wine classes at Sherry-Lehmann. “Only 1% of all wine in the world can age over 5 years and wines being kept at Wine Caves is that 1%.”

Thus far, Glorious Sun has sent 820 letters informing customers that their wine is at Pearl River and asking for proof of ownership. A “minority” of the letters were returned because the customers had moved, Glorious Sun’s attorney Edmund O’Brien told The Post.

“The next phase is dealing with the difficult cases,” O’Brien said, saying it could take more than a year to locate clients it hasn’t reached. “We have lots of ideas about how to handle those situations but we are not there yet.”

According to Zraly, “A lot of people bought wine from Sherry-Lehmann and forgot about it. Some of the customers may be too old to care or they forgot they have it there.”

In September, things took a bizarre turn when Sherry Lehmann’s Wine Caves storage arm sued Glorious Sun, accusing it of holding the trove of rare Burgundy and Bordeaux “hostage” – and filing for a temporary restraining order that halted the redistribution process for six weeks.

At the time, Glorious Sun had begun returning about 1,000 bottles to 13 lucky clients between June and September, according to court filings. On Oct. 14, New York state Judge Thomas Zugibe lifted the restraining order — and Glorious Sun restarted the “laborious” effort, according to court papers. 

Wine Caves also accused the landlord of grossly underestimating the size of the stash, which it pegged at 300,000 bottles, according to court papers. Glorious Sun countered that a 2023 FBI raid of the Blue Hill facility put the count at 32,000. The landlord says it simply wants its space back – and notes that it’s spending thousands of dollars reaching out to Wine Caves customers.

According to court filings, Wine Caves new majority owner is James Galtieri, a former Sherry-Lehmann supplier who for 20 years was the exclusive US importer for Château Lafite Rothschild – among the most coveted wines in the world with new bottles fetching upwards of $700 each.

According to court papers, Galtieri was brought in by Shyda Gilmer, Sherry-Lehmann’s former CEO who landed in a legal firestorm over the wine shop’s closure and scandals. After Wine Caves got an eviction notice from Blue Hill Plaza in November 2024, Gilmer agreed to move the wine out within 35 days and pay the $27,500 in back rent but the negotiations failed so the wine stayed put, according to court filings.

Galtieri met with O’Brien in April and offered to pay the rent arrears plus other expenses the business had racked up, O’Brien said. But Glorious Sun took a pass after Wine Caves wouldn’t offer an indemnity agreement protecting the landlord in the event the customers sued, according to O’Brien. 

“I think for very good reasons my client doesn’t trust these people and we don’t want to look at a situation where customers sue us for turning over their wine to these people,” O’Brien told The Post.

Galtieri did not return calls or emails requesting comment.

Wine Caves’ attorney John Balestriere said in a statement, “Wine Caves is not only an active business it is actively taking steps to protect its clients’ wines, and to move forward in the wine business relying on the decades of experience and achievements of its owners.”

Glorious Sun claimed in court filings that Wine Caves “wants the wine so that it can collect (at a minimum) storage fees” which amount to some $1.6 million. Wine Caves’ own lawsuit seemingly confirmed that, alleging that Glorious Sun is “depriving” it of “the right to possess the wine, causing it millions of dollars in damage, including a loss of substantial storage fees.”

“Wine Caves will soon have all the information it needs regarding its clients’ wines so that it may finally help them get their wine back and move forward with its business,” Balestriere added.

For some Sherry-Lehmann customers, at least, that ordeal is over – among them the Boston-based oenophile who – now 68 – was in his 30s when he scooped up his precious Petrus and Mouton Rothschild.

While his recovered stash is worth a fortune, it’s not quite what he thought it would be, noting that the labels weren’t pristine and the crates had been opened when he received them. He guessed there was “sweating” from temperature changes, although the fill levels were just right.

“I feel lucky it wasn’t stolen,” he told The Post on Friday. “I will probably have it over Christmas with a roast with loved ones and family.”