Brennan's Restaurant's wine cellars cooked by Katrina struggle

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On the night after Katrina hit, Jimmy Brennan, partner in Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans’s French Quarter, and his chef, Lazone Randolph, sat up with pistols loaded to ward off any looters intent on robbing their 30,000-bottle wine cellar of its treasures.“They’d probably be more interested” in the hard liquor, said Brennan, 64, “but we weren’t taking any chances. We had a magnum of 1857 Lafitte-Rothschild in there.” It wasn’t the looters but Katrina itself that caused Brennan’s, founded in 1946, to lose its entire cellar. Even though the French Quarter was spared from flooding after the levees broke, wind and rain tore up the neighborhood and shut down power. For three weeks, the wines in Brennan’s cellar, located in a former carriage house, sat in heat of as much as 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and mold engulfed everything.When Jimmy Brennan sat down to taste the wines, he found bottle after bottle had gone bad, tasting like burnt sherry.“To have to restore the restaurant was tough enough,” he said in an interview at Brennan’s, due to reopen later this month. “But to lose all those magnificent wines just killed me.” Most of the city’s restaurants were suffering the same fate. The oldest, Antoine’s, dating back to 1840, paid $15,000 a day to a company just to dry the place out, and its legendary wine cellar was almost completely lost.16,000 bottles According to beverage manager Matthew Ousset, it lost more than 16,000 bottles. Visiting the cellar, I found its floor-to-ceiling shelves eerily empty except for replacement liquor and a few wines added since August.“We ordered first what sells best,” Ousset said. “We won’t have any Bordeaux until this fall.” At Restaurant August, also in the French Quarter, about $80,000 in inventory was lost. “Fortunately, we were able to borrow some wines from our other restaurant,” Besh Steakhouse at Harrah’s Casino, “because they had their own generator,” chef-owner John Besh said. “And it didn’t hurt that the casino was headquarters for the National Guard.” Still, August’s insurer, Lloyd’s of London, didn’t remove the wine, much of which August itself destroyed. Besh was reimbursed only $15,000 for both lost food and wine. “While we were closed,” he said, “we tried a lot of wines and drank most of the champagne ourselves.” Insurance policies Different insurers handled the losses in different ways. In some cases, they refused at first to pay restitution for wines if they weren’t specifically covered in policies, relenting only when Louisiana law was cited to the effect that anything not specifically excluded must be included in restitution.Different issues arose at celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse’s three restaurants. According to sommelier Steve Russett, “we lost all 8,000 bottles at Delmonico’s and 6,000 at Emeril’s. Even though looters couldn’t get into Emeril’s wine storage, they pried the door open just enough to let the heat in to destroy the wine.” Fortunately, Emeril’s had another storehouse of 6,000 bottles across the street, where insulation prevented the wines from rising above 68 degrees. The company expects to recoup about $1 million from its insurer in replacement costs for the two restaurants. At their third restaurant, NOLA, they’re still battling with a different insurer over the wine’s value.Most reimbursements have been based on original costs, not current market value, which would be much higher. “We have no complaints about our insurance company living up to its promises, but we only got $840,000 for wines that would cost $2.4 million to replace,” Brennan said.Salvaged wine In most cases, insurers attempting to recoup some of their payout sold the wine to a salvage company, which in turn sold it to a licensed wine and liquor purchaser.“When the insurer told us they would take the wine and resell it, we bought it right back from them,” says Mary Sonnier, who with her husband, Greg, could not even get into their restaurant, Gabrielle, for five weeks. “We drink it ourselves and a lot of it came through fine.” The restaurant is being relocated to the Uptown district.What happened to the wines after salvagers sold them is anyone’s guess, though salvager Bob Jones of Garvin-Fram Inc. in Schaumburg, Ill., which handled many of the sales, says a great deal was shipped overseas.Damaged goods “We buy the wines from the insurer,” Jones said. “If they paid the restaurant $100,000, we sell on consignment and pay them about $20,000.” Then, he said, he finds “a licensed wine purchaser.” Jones couldn’t say whether the purchasers then listed the wines as “damaged goods.” “I know they must be in Illinois, but not in Louisiana, and what the rules are outside the U.S. I just don’t know.” John Mariani writes on wine for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.