My first post here!
Never been into cognac previously (although it's better than Whisky for sure, in my opinion ), but my father-in law has given me and the wife a bottle of L'or de J & F Martell from the 90s.Unfortunately on it's return voyage from Malaysia to Norway it seems that the lower pressure in the aircraft has caused a few drops to be pushed out past the cork (my guess as to the cause anyway)! It can be no more than a few drops and is all still behind the plastic seal just looking a bit unsightly - no sign of anything escaping further out of the plastic down the bottle or into the box, for example.
Here's a pic of the bottle from last year when I photographed his whole collection to catalogue it, looking pristine (click for full size hopefully)...
And here's how it is now with some leakage behind the plastic seal...
So please forgive the rookie question - is this some kind of disaster, or not!? I can't see any way to clean up behind the seal, and even though I'm a rookie I think I must be right to believe if I remove the plastic seal the bottle may as well have tea in it as far as it's market value is concerned (as several of the minatures in his collection apparently do, so admitted my wife to her father confessing childhood crimes during our cataloguing session!
), so I cant do that, right?Worst case - is the bottle perhaps already ruined (so i better just drink it) - I mean the fact it happened at all maybe indicating the cork was already bad/shrunk in some way? Is there maybe a way a reputable company (or maybe Martell themselves?) can remove the plastic, clean and reseal maintaining authenticity? Or does this not really matter at all and not effect the value too much?
Although we dont intend to sell, it would be nice to know if it's value can be retained. Feels terrible that this has been quite happy for 20+ years with my father-in-law, and that by accepting his generosity we may have spoiled something quite rare and special! He also wants to give us a similar 'level' bottle of Camus, but we're worried of the same thing happening to that in transit.
Any advice very much appreciated, folks! Thanks,
Liam
