Diner At U.K. Steakhouse Accidentally Served $5,000 Bottle Of Wine

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By  Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

Everyone likes to be treated to a little something extra when they dine out. Maybe it's an extra treat on one's birthday, or a particularly stiff cocktail in the wake of a good tip. But for one lucky table at Hawksmoor Manchester, a steak and seafood restaurant in the U.K. city, a little extra went a lot farther than usual.

BBC News reports of a pricey mixup at Hawksmoor Manchester last night, when a bottle of 2001 Chateau le Pin Pomerol was mistakenly served to a customer who had ordered another, far cheaper bottle. The restaurant's going price for that particular vintage is a cool £4,500 (approximately $5,030 in the U.S.), and the mistake wasn't caught until this morning:

First off, The Takeout would like to fervently salute Hawksmoor Manchester's management for not reprimanding the server in question; anybody who's ever worked in a restaurant can attest that these things happen, no matter how well-trained or pedigreed the employee. Apparently, "a manager from another branch had been helping out and offered to find the wine for a waitress, but picked up the wrong bottle," so it's about as innocuous an error as a $5,000 error can be.

That aside, imagine being the people who "... did not realise they had quaffed a £4,500 bottle, while the second bottle they asked for was unavailable." We're glad they enjoyed it enough to try for another, but we also hope it was savored, and that nobody did that thing where you slam down your final glass a lot faster than the rest of them, because the check's been paid and everybody wants to leave now.

We should all be so fortunate as to drink something very expensive by pure accident, at least once in our lives.

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