Would you like a bottle at thirty-seven-fifty? Left screaming after drinking a bottle of Screaming Eagle

It's my favourite don't-trust-the-sommelier story of last year. 

Joe Lentini, an occasional wine drinker - maybe a glass once a month -, was dining with friends at the Bobby Flay Steak at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. He and two others of his party of 10 decided to share a bottle of wine. Read on as Karin Price Mueller tells the story for NJ.com:

The host of the dinner -- the guy who would be paying the bill -- told Lentini to pick a bottle, Lentini said.
"I asked the waitress if she could recommend something decent because I don't have experience with wine," Lentini said. "She pointed to a bottle on the menu. I didn't have my glasses. I asked how much and she said, 'Thirty-seven fifty.'"
The drinkers at the table agreed to the price and they ordered, Lentini said.
Soon, the sommelier -- the wine steward -- presented the corked bottle at the table. Lentini said he was having conversation with his companions and didn't really pay attention, but he approved of the bottle.
A taste of the wine was served for him to sample. He approved, he said, and the bottle was placed on the table.
"It was okay. It was good," Lentini said of the wine. "It wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. It was fine."
When dinner was over, the check was handed to the host, who was sitting opposite Lentini at the round table, Lentini said.
"[The host] was sitting across from me and he handed the bill to person next to him, who handed it to the next person until it got to me," he said. "I showed the gentleman next to me and we were shocked. We couldn't believe it."
The total bill was $4,700.61, including tax. The bottle of wine, Screaming Eagle, Oakville 2011 -- cost $3,750.
"I thought the wine was $37.50," Lentini said.
Lentini said he called the waitress over and said there was a problem. He said he explained that he never would have ordered such expensive wine, and repeated that when he asked about the price, the waitress said "thirty-seven fifty," not "three-thousand, seven-hundred-and-fifty."
The waitress disagreed, and a maître d'/manager was called over.
"I said the waitress told me it cost 'thirty-seven fifty,' not 'three-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty dollars,'" Lentini said.
The maître d'/manager offered to give separate bills, so the dinner bill, which wasn't being disputed, could be paid.
Next, Lentini said he was told the best price the restaurant could offer was $2,200.
Lentini said he couldn't afford that, but to be able to leave, he and two other diners agreed to split the $2,200 bill.
The diner sitting to Lentini's left at the table, Don Chin, said he heard what Lentini heard when the wine was ordered.
"Joe had asked for a suggestion on the wine and the waitress pointed to a wine," he said. "Joe asked the price and she said 'thirty-seven fifty,' not 'three-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty,' which is what I would have said, so we all thought it was $37.50."
When the bill came, "We all had a heart attack," Chin said.
Marcia Lentini was sitting to Joe Lentini's right at the table.
"My husband said to the waitress, 'I don't know much about wine. Can you pick for me?'" Marcia Lentini said. "He asked her how much, and she said, 'thirty-seven fifty.'"
"But then it was $3,750. Who would expect that in a restaurant?" she said.

I stumbled across this salutary tale via a delightful column in The Washington Post where wine writer Dave McIntyre describes a dinner with a friend who knew the price of Screaming Eagle because he had read the story of Mr Lentini's misadventure.
For comparison with his friend's Screaming Eagle, McIntyre brought along a bottle of RdV Vineyards 2009 Lost Mountain, the closest thing Virginia has to a cult wine. It sells for $95. And the verdicts?

Our Screaming Eagle was a 2011, a rainy and difficult vintage for California. Yet this wine was lush and beautiful, with velvety texture and bright fruit and seamless tannins. Though opulent at 14.8 percent alcohol, according to the label, the wine did not taste hot. It was sweet as blackberry jam, with a hint of sage and the essence of orange oil, like the scent that comes off the grater while you’re zesting the fruit.
“I’m not hallucinating. This is really good cabernet,” my friend said. “But if you put it next to a good-year Opus One or Silver Oak” — two famous Napa cabs that are much less expensive, though by no means cheap — “I’d have trouble telling them apart.”
The Virginia wine also was delicious, but tasted side by side with the Screaming Eagle it seemed clumsy and shy at first, a country bumpkin at a society ball. Still, its fruit and structure kept drawing us back. It was quiet, yet we sensed it had something to say.

After dinner was done but the wines were not, the wine writer and his friend (who had asked for anonymity because, after all, people might think he’s insane) swirled and savored the last of the two reds.

... the Screaming Eagle was, well, what it was. It hadn’t changed, and it was even getting a bit boring. The RdV, in contrast, had exchanged its initial reticence for oratory. The upstart Virginia wine was now singing, its voice resplendent in our glasses. And we could buy a case and a half for the price of a single bottle of the Screaming Eagle.
As we gathered our coats, I asked my friend whether his extravagance had been worth it. “Absolutely,” he said. “I tasted one of Napa’s most exclusive wines and shared it with friends. What more is there to ask?”

I am hoping my brother David has an attitude like that for I know he has a case or three of a classic vintage Krug sitting somewhere in a London bond store. At a price and a taste I hear tell that would give a Screaming Eagle more than a run for its money.