I came across this on my Twitter feed: x.com
Translation of the tweet: “The kind of issue we come accross, delivering in China with freezing temperatures”.
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(Romanée-Conti is one of the best French wines, a bottle is worth approx. €15,000) 
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This is a very expensive loss, but given the price I would be defrosting that chunk of ice and running the wine through a coffee filter to remove any glass. It won’t be as good as it could have been, but might as well salvage something.
Then again, the owner of this bottle is probably a billionaire who would consider my idea as appealing as licking spillage off the floor. Maybe it went into the world’s most expensive Boeuf Bourguignon.
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Meh, as with art, one of the most expensive doesn’t mean one of the best.
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You’re right, but this wine is both regarded as one of the best, and is one of the most expensive bottles out there.
I haven’t tasted it myself, so I cannot say how good it really is.
The thing is, when you reach prices like 15,000 euros, there’s no way that reflects the wine’s production cost.
A wine can cost a lot to make – small and very valuable parcel of land, meticulous manual management of the vines, grapes handpicked and sorted individually and so on – but that justifies a retail price as high as a few hundred dollars. Beyond that it’s about status and reputation piled on top of extreme scarcity. (There are other very rare and excellent wines that don’t command such a price because they lack the cachet.)
Which is to say, even if DRC is widely regarded as “the best” there are bound to be others that cost a small fraction of the price but will taste almost as good even to professional tasters.
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It’s still good!
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“To give credit where it is due, my father did know a great deal about wine;certainly more than I know. He once explained to me that anyone can find good wine–all you have to do is pay a lot of money. The reason for learning about wine is so you can find a wine you like without paying a lot of money.”
–From Dzur by Steven Brust (scraped from Google Books)
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Black Books, YES!!
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That’s a great quote, thanks!
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So drink good wine! 
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My sentiments almost exactly – paying a lot of money will usually get you good wine, but not always. Sometimes wines just aren’t very good despite a steep price. More often, a lot of money can get you wine that you can recognize as objectively “good” while simultaneously disliking it.
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Whether wine or much of anything else, I believe that the motivation to defer to ‘experts’ is driven by the natural human need for – at times – the best of something and by insecurity in our own abilities to choose what’s best. (Those other people must have special skills… or why would they be called [or call themselves] experts?):
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I was certain someone was going to share that Guardian link. 
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Ride the roll! Play Lotto tonight!
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Came here looking for this… leaving satisfied.
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One would think, that when delivering fifteen grand bottles of wine, it would behoove the shipper to use some kind of tepmperature-controlled conveyance, surely?
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In the following tweets, he gives more context: https://twitter.com/Namhao/status/964205862519754755
Beaucoup de pb de logistiques avec la Chine du nord a l approche du nouvel an, les societes logistiques ferment 2-3 semaines avant et bcp de gens prennent le risque de transporter sans protection adapte. Envoyer du vin au Tibet une grande experience aussi
A lot of logistical problems in Northen China around New Year’s, a lot of logistical companies close 2~3 weeks before that and a lot of people take the risk of sending things without adequate protection. Sending wine to Tibet is also quite an ordeal.
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I did, last night. the results were, well, it was drinkable.
Wait a minute, all that article says is that the cheapest wine in a restaurant is often just as good as the second- and third-cheapest from the wine list.
The other two links are more interesting.
