Expensive drop as forklift shatters $1.1 mln wine

An Australian winemaker said Friday he was "numb" after a malfunctioning forklift destroyed more than Aus$1 million ($1.1 million) of his prized shiraz. Some 462 cases of the 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz, which sells for Aus$185 a bottle, smashed to the ground as it was being loaded for export to the United States. It cost winemaker Sparky Marquis one third of his annual production. "So how do I feel? Gut-wrenched, shocked, numb," he told reporters. "When they opened up the container they said it was like a murder scene," he added. "There was red everywhere. "But it smelled phenomenal." Brett McCarthur, of Kerry Logistics, said the company moves more than 20,000 containers a year and had never had such a malfunction before. "It was very hard to make that call to Sparky," he said. The saving grace was that the wine was fully insured, with assessors already on the scene.