A guy walks into a wine shop

That would be me last Sat. in Indianapolis, prior to a wine and food feast , notes to follow. Anyway, I spied a 750 ml. of berrenauslese by Balbach, the Riesling Neirsteiner Hipping 1994 for $29.90. Whoa, their last bottle!!! My buddies were ready to go so I took the lone bottle to the register. They rang it up and told me that would be $44 something. NO NO NO! Tax could not be that much. I went back to the shelf and pulled off the shelf price tag and had the now manager compare the bottle sticker and shelf tag, which matched. He stated that they could not sell the bottle for that low a price. They had me sign a refund slip as they had already rung up the sale. I was flabbergasted. I have never seen a wine shop or any retail store pull that kind of move!! I assume that they had a couple of cases of this wine come in many years ago and that price was correct back then but the shelf tag and bottle tag had never gotten updated. The staff member who conducted a small free tasting for us when we arrived seemed upset with the manage. There are many very good wine shops in Indianapolis but I will avoid this one in the future.

[David M. Bueker]

What they did is generally illegal.

The same basic thing happened to me earlier this year. I was at a shop in Franklin, NJ and spotted a ridiculously discounted bottle on the shelf with a bright yellow "Clearance" tag. I think it was a Penfolds Bin 407 for something like 23 dollars. When I brought it to the register the computer would not accept the clearance price, which had to be input by hand by the clerk. It kept coming up as around 50, despite the code from the shelf tag being force fed into it. They called the manager who explained that there must be a minimum price - dictated either by the distruter, thier corporate mothership, or the state - below which they could not sell that wine, clearance tag or no clearance tag. He was very apologetic, but there was nothing he could do - including sell me the wine for the price on the shelf.

I still have no idea if it was all BS or not....

Based solely upon the wine, I have a pretty good idea of the store involved. Was it the location on 86th Street? I can put you in touch with the owner (PM me). Not only was that manager a jerk but he/she was lax about changing his shelf pricing and I think the store owner would like to hear about that as well as your experience.
The good news is that wine was probably sitting at "retail" storage for 15+ years and no bargain even at $30.