Adelaide - AFP
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.