Michael Affatato curated a world-class antique bottle collection
Michael Affatato, the mind behind Love Lane’s beloved Village Cheese Shop, has another hobby filling an entire wall of built-in shelves at his Mattituck home.
Antique bottles captured Affatato’s attention over two decades ago when his daughter pulled a glass medicine container from his Margaux, France garden. Now he holds the largest documented collection of antique English wine bottles.
“It was so striking,” says Affatato of the medicine container. “I cleaned it up and said, ‘I’m going to put it in the window.’ Stupid me; it was early spring or late autumn, so the ground was cold and I was using hot water and of course it broke. I learned very quickly.”
Unaware of the bottle’s value and attracted to it visually, Affatato researched the vintage glass scene, sparking his awareness of the bottle collection world, full of associations, clubs and plenty of shows.
His interest strayed from perfume, whiskey, and medicine flasks that he’d find in his garden — where garbage was disposed of and burned decades back at a low enough temperature that some glass items survived the flames — toward one of his favorite domains: wine.
“As I was educating myself, reading more books and getting more and more involved in different clubs and shows, I started getting into the English [wine] bottles,” says Affatato. “There are a couple of reasons why I only collect English bottles. In the pecking order — the market establishes what the value is — English bottles are by far the highest value and the most attractive collectability, categorically speaking, of all the bottles.”
Now, Michael’s collection, valued at over $500,000, includes several dozen English onion-style, dark green, brown and blackish bottles with broad round bases and short necks. Some bottles feature damaged lips since they predate the modern corkscrew, and instead had wooden stoppers with gauze, wax and something to tie it closed, plus unique seals specific to the owner or bar the bottles represented.
