Q&A: He Brought Me to the House of Wine
He Brought Me to the House of Wine
Question
A workshop that operated out of a warehouse in central Israel was required to vacate the premises.
The building was slated for immediate demolition.
He cleared out one corner after another and saw a lot of rags, asked around, and was told that over the last 40 years there had been 30 different tenants there.
“Take everything — in a few hours a tractor is coming and tomorrow it will destroy it all.”
He took it.
He found rags there, but also several bottles of wine.
He brought them to me as a gift.
I see bottles, some of them 10 years old or more, dusty; some of the labels are intact and some are blurred, torn, etc.
Suddenly I discovered that some of them have a sticker from the wine shop in that moshav.
It’s possible they belong to the owner of the wine shop (maybe he rented the place as a warehouse in the past?). It’s also possible they belong to someone who bought wine from him and just left them there and for some reason forgot/left/abandoned them there.
What should I do?
Is there an obligation to return them?
Or since the place is designated for demolition, is it essentially ownerless — save what you can and it becomes yours?
There’s a good chance it belongs to the wine-shop owner, and also a good chance it doesn’t…
Drink it?
Answer
There is no reason at all to worry that it was not acquired lawfully. The mark of the shop owner has no significance, since the wine is offered for sale. To say that it was not acquired lawfully, you need a good reason to suspect that.
Therefore this is a found item after the owner has despaired of recovering it, and you may drink it. Just not all at once.
If you want to be especially righteous, ask the shop owner whether he happened to have had a theft or whether it was his warehouse and he forgot it there. But strictly speaking, you are not obligated.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t think so. This is after despair of recovery, and therefore the identifying mark has no significance.
Now I saw that on some of the wonderful bottles there is a clear identifying mark.
A permanent defect in the labels.
Does that change the ruling?
(within the regular framework, not the especially-righteous one)