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.