Some 20,000 bottles of rare wine worth millions remain unclaimed more than three years after New York City’s iconic Sherry-Lehmann collapsed, and the landlord wants them gone.
Cratefuls of high-end vintages are still stacked on the basement floor of a tower at Blue Hill Plaza, a plain office complex in Rockland County, long after the famed Park Avenue wine shop shut its doors. The Hong Kong-based landlord, Glorious Sun, took control of the roughly $16 million collection when the retailer’s storage arm defaulted on rent and has been trying to get the bottles back to their owners so it can lease the space to a paying tenant.
The New York Post reported that only about one-third of the stash, 10,135 bottles, has been returned. The rest sits unclaimed more than three years after Sherry-Lehmann’s implosion.
Edmond O’Brien, a lawyer at Dorf Nelson & Zauderer who represents Glorious Sun, put the situation bluntly.
"The people who really wanted their wine back have been taken care of,"
O’Brien said. He added:
"Now it’s time to find the people who haven’t been paying attention."
Sherry-Lehmann closed for good in March 2023 after 89 years in business. It failed to renew its liquor license and pay its rent. The storage side of the operation, known as Wine Caves, left customers scrambling. Many tried in vain to recover bottles they had left in the facility once word of the retailer’s troubles spread.
A 2023 New York Times report alleged the company had been selling some wine that belonged to storage customers to collectors. Federal agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspectors, moved in after that reporting. Agents later raided the Blue Hill Plaza space as part of what has been described as an ongoing fraud investigation.
Sherry-Lehmann denied the allegation. In a 2025 court complaint, the company claimed “as many as 200 [law enforcement] agents at the Blue Hill facility for five days” and said the U.S. Attorney’s Office conducted a multi-day search for information to back up the Times story. The same filing stated there had been “no arrests nor any indictments as a result of these raids.”
The company also sued Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Stewart, accusing him of orchestrating a smear campaign against the firm and owners Shyda Gilmer and Kris Green. A federal judge dismissed that case on Tuesday.
Glorious Sun placed an ad in Wine Spectator this summer that read, in part: “Attention... We may have your wine. If you stored wine with Sherry-Lehmann (or Wine Caves) please contact Blue Hill Plaza.”
The goal is straightforward. The landlord wants the inventory cleared so the basement can generate rent again. A former Sherry-Lehmann worker told the Post the remaining bottles stay unclaimed because of “ignorance, wealth or relocations.”
That explanation fits the profile of a clientele that once paid top dollar for trophy bottles. New Château Lafite Rothschild releases can fetch upwards of $700 each. When people of means move, lose track of paperwork, or simply stop watching a storage account, expensive inventory can sit untouched for years.
O’Brien said he received a call over the summer from an FBI agent. He described a three-way conversation with a new investigator who wanted an update on the Blue Hill Plaza situation and on related litigation. O’Brien asked whether the case was dead. The answer, he said, was “No.” The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wine Caves filed a complaint last year in state court in Rockland County accusing Glorious Sun of withholding wine that belonged to the storage business. According to that complaint, James Galtieri, a former Sherry-Lehmann supplier and, for two decades, the exclusive U.S. importer for Château Lafite Rothschild, had become the new majority owner of Wine Caves after Gilmer brought him in. His current ownership status is unclear. Galtieri did not respond to calls and an email.
In August, lawyer John Balestriere asked the court to release him as counsel for Wine Caves, saying his legal fees were unpaid. The court approved the request. John JD McFerrin-Clancy, the lawyer now listed as representing Wine Caves, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pattern is familiar in collapsing specialty retailers: unpaid bills, abandoned inventory, finger-pointing in court, and customers left to chase their own property. Here the goods are not ordinary stock. They are rare bottles whose value depends on provenance, storage conditions, and clear title, all of which become harder to prove the longer the crates sit in a suburban office basement.
About 20,000 bottles remain. The full collection under the landlord’s control has been valued at roughly $16 million. Just 10,135 bottles have gone back to rightful owners. The rest waits for people who either do not know the wine is there, do not need the money, or have moved on without leaving a trail.
Glorious Sun is not running a wine club. It is a commercial landlord trying to recover usable space after a tenant’s storage business defaulted. O’Brien’s message is that the motivated owners already reclaimed their property. The holdouts are the ones who have not been paying attention.
Federal investigators, for their part, have not closed the book. No public arrests or indictments have been announced from the raids described in the 2025 complaint, yet the agent who contacted the landlord’s lawyer indicated the matter remains active. That leaves the crates in limbo: too valuable to dump, too tangled to move quickly, and still tied to a fraud probe that has produced more questions than charges.
When a storied retailer collapses under license failures, rent defaults, and allegations of selling customer goods, the people left holding the bag are the landlord, the courts, and any collector who assumed someone else was watching the cellar. Expensive wine does not collect itself.