400YR Old Wine Goes Up For Auction

According to Christie’s, since the wine was not fortified, it likely has not aged well and its drinkability is “questionable.” The auction house is considering the lot as having “historical and vinous importance.”

Waiting for TN…

Surprised that Acker Merrall is not the auction house.

According to the auction: “It’s believed that the bottles date back to between 1670 and 1690.”

Now, if it’s 1670, 1675, 1682, 1683, or 1686, I could see it really taking off, but the other vintages weren’t as good.

LOL

So they were afraid to taste it? And “surprisingly it still contained alcohol”?

Where is Francois Audouze when we really need him?

Dan Kravitz

400 year wine is dead at retail.

Under the sea in ice cold temps for 400 years? I thought Christie’s was more interested in mystery wines suddenly discovered with records of the individual purchaser.

The wines were under a lot of pressure. I’m surprised the corks didn’t get pushed in.

Cork?
I thought that was not used untill the 18th century.

Infanticide !
WAY Too young !

Forget sabering a wine to open it! I want to see someone open a wine that, “…will be stored in specially designed water-filled storage tanks…” Now THAT’S the makings of a good party!

Maybe if they were magnums.

Tasting notes from Allen Meadows, Gil Lempert-Schwarz, Joey Baggadonutz, or other wine critics notable in rare-vintage auctions might be helpful, too.

Where is Mel Brooks? We need a TN on the 4000 year old wine from the 2000 year old man.

I hear its in a dumb phase right now.

Don’t know if you’re serious or not, but cork was used centuries before that. Some amphorae were closed with cork. Each cork would have to be hand-fitted obviously and I have no idea what kind of corkscrew they used to pull them out!

More to the point though, mass use of cork only came about when Robert Mansel made his coal-fired glass and mass-produced bottles. He was circa King James I who was granting letters of patent when he wasn’t overseeing the translation of the bible or banning tobacco smoking. That was sometime in the very early 1600s. When he got the patent, he developed a way of making glass bottles using a metal mold, which is still how they do it today. Prior to that, each bottle was blown individually, which seems to be the case with these newly discovered bottles.

Anyway, once he had a method of mass-producing bottles with standardized openings, he needed a way to mass produce closures. The material science of the day wasn’t what it is now so the only material that could be compressed and spring back to its original shape was cork. So they were using cork stoppers in the early-mid 1600s. Material science has improved tremendously since then, but there are still people who insist on using cork because they think it is romantic.

I think they should Coravin these bottles and find out what’s inside. Who knows - maybe little fish are swimming around in there.

Or, since it seemed to be something that was done from time to time, the bottles may have been poisoned and sent as a gift to someone who needed to be eliminated. Imagine buying these at the auction and inviting all the dignitaries and notables you can to taste them, and then poisoning everybody in one swoop!

Parker claims to have barrel tasted this vintage.

I’d corvain it

I have received many emails concerning these bottles. What is my experience with these kinds of bottles?

I have bought a bottle with all the certificates saying that it was in a boat sunk in 1739. The form is not far from the form of the proposed bottles, and I had been warned: you buy history more than wine. So I have no illusion: it will be more salted water and sand that Roumier Musigny.

I have bought a bottle who was declared around 1690, because of the form of the bottle used during a period whose center is 1690. I have opened it and it was a good surprise that it was wine. It was a flat wine, but it was wine. Drinkable, with no pleasure but no disgust. The real pleasure was to drink a wine made during the reign of Louis XIV when France was glorious.
This bottle has been examined by the University of Dijon because I brought it to them, and their examination with many curves and diagrams showed that it is (I have some left) of an extreme complexity.

The only real really enjoyable old bottle that I have drunk is a 1727 wine which was kept in a cellar in Hannover (Germany), filled in several barrels with sweet wine, and bottled in the 1960ies when only one barrel was left. I drank it and I have still one. It is a magnificent sweet wine. And the pleasure of drinking is as great as to think that it was made during the reign of Louis XV.

These bottles presented by Christie’s can be bought to buy history. My opinion is that nothing good can be drunk in these bottles. And if I am wrong I accept it.
As I have had experiences with such bottles, I have not an urgent need to bid on these bottles. I wish good luck to the ones who will bid.