Hospital launches fight to save vintage wine … but it may have turned to vinegar

The fate of 1,404 bottles of rare wine seized from a private collector will be decided by a judge next week after a hospital claimed them for its use. The vintage wine was confiscated under a Pennsylvania law limiting nearly all alcoholic beverage sales to state liquor stores. It was part of a cache of 2,447 bottles with an estimated value of at least $125,000 police seized from lawyer Arthur Goldman. However, Chester County Hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester has now applied to a court seeking custody of the wine to resell for charity under an obscure state law that allows forfeited liquor “to be delivered to a hospital for its use”. Judge Edward Griffin will decide on September 3 whether state law intended hospital wine donations to be only for medicinal purposes or whether the hospital can legally resell the bottles for charity.

Given the value and usefulness of any forfeited bottles of wine in this matter, the destruction of this evidence is against public policy

Hospital lawyer Dawson R Muth

The wine was seized in 2014 from Mr Goldman and his wife, Melissa Kurtzman, from the cellar of their home in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Last week, they reached a deal with police so they could pick out 1,047 of the bottles and the state would keep the remainder. Police plan to destroy them, to the dismay of collectors. In his petition to the court, the hospital says even the state Liquor Control Board supports the donation of the wine. Needless destruction would “not serve any meaningful purpose,” the board wrote. However, the wine may not even be drinkable, experts say. Because it was stored improperly by the state police following its confiscation, it may have turned to “vinegar” while in custody over the past 20 months, experts fear.

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