I’m the photographer at a wine store and found this little gem years ago while shooting bottles for the website. Thought of it because of all the recent “what’s this in my wine?” posts.
Just one bold little gnat/fly who died doing what he loved :')
Haven’t seen another since. 🫡
Wonder if anyone else has a similar experience/picture.
by thewinecountry
12 Comments
We had spider in one wine at my job once
That is one fly wine!
No longer suitable for vegetarians.
At least they died happy
This trend of fortifying everything with protein has got to stop!
If you saw how many spiders crawl out of the macro bins during harvest, you would be shocked that this isn’t more common
I work at a winery. During labeling, an eagle-eyed employee noticed a hair inside a bottle.
I once opened a bottle and poured a taste. At the bottom, a suspicious insect leg. I strained it and found an earwig.
Mosquito
Have a bottle of Sauternes in my office with a fly in it. Will probably drink it anyway
Maybe we need t-shirts that say “Eat the gnat!”
As u/WCSakaCB mentioned, the sheer amount of spiders, earwigs, and fruit flys a cellar rat encounters throughout harvest is insane.
I’m not surprised this made it to a retailer. The fact that you happened to choose that particular bottle to photograph is sheer luck.
Sure, beyond all the racking and filtration, the chances the fly winds up in the bottle is very low, the fact that you chose that one out of (I’m assuming)12 is also crazy.
But also… working in retail I’ve also received my fair share of shiners (bottles missing front/back/most labels), so because people literally miss bottles without a front label, I’m not shocked either. The wine should be fine, could probably get a replacement bottle from the distributor, might be able to open it to try it. I’d say between a 2-40% chance it has a significant amount of VA (volatile acidity) compared to non-fruit fly wine, depending on the producer and based on their cleanliness in the winery/SOPs/SO2 usage.