Some people brag about serving scotch whisky that's 15 years old. But three bottles of Mackinlays scotch flown to Scotland by private jet Monday date back to the late 19th Century.
The bottles are linked to famed explorer Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition in 1907. They were found last year in a crate that had been buried beneath a basic hut Shackleton had used during his dramatic excursion, more formally known as the British Antarctic Expedition.
The crate itself was, unsurprisingly, frozen solid after more than a century beneath the Antarctic surface.
But the precious bottles were found intact, and researchers could hear the whisky sloshing around inside. Antarctica's minus 22 Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) temperature was not enough to freeze the liquor, dating from 1896 or 1897, and experts said it was in remarkably good condition.
And probably tasty too: It is common in London's look-at-me bars to sell some aged cognacs for 50 pounds ($80) a glass or more, but none of Shackleton's stash will be put on this private market, so no one will know how much consumers would have paid for such a historic dram.
The bottles, part of a cache of 11 bottles found, were judged too valuable to be returned to Scotland on a commercial flight — for reasons frequent travelers can understand — so they were flown back in the private jet of Vijay Mallya, owner of Whyte & Mackay's, which bought Mackinlays some years ago.
The Mackinlays whisky will be studied and tasted in a lab for six weeks before being returned to Shackleton's hut under the floorboards of Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island, near Antarctica's McMurdo Sound.
The lab findings will be sent to the Antarctic Heritage Trust.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41122315/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Oh! For just one glass!
I'm with you there Charley!!!
:fap:
WANT!
THE FUCKS ARE GOING TO PUT IT BACK AND LEAVE IT THERE. :cry:
Quote from: Charley Brown on January 17, 2011, 09:31:28 PM
THE FUCKS ARE GOING TO PUT IT BACK AND LEAVE IT THERE. :cry:
I really am surprised they said that in the article considering the possible value of this and those buyers out there who will not think twice if the product were obtained "less" than legally...
Quote from: Charley Brown on January 17, 2011, 09:31:28 PM
THE FUCKS ARE GOING TO PUT IT BACK AND LEAVE IT THERE. :cry:
1. Rent boat.
2. Bring parka.
Quote from: Charley Brown on January 17, 2011, 09:31:28 PM
THE FUCKS ARE GOING TO PUT IT BACK AND LEAVE IT THERE. :cry:
Shed no tears; This is providence. They are putting it where they found it. And leaving.
Yeah, they found "11" bottles. Uh huh. Sure. No doubt the fact such a scotch would be perfectly chilled did not sway them in the slightest in reporting the number of bottles accurately and without sampling any of the wares.
I wonder if they were using chill-filtering back then? If not, the taste may be a little surprising...
Woulda been more like two if it was me.
There is little information on the value of vintage bottles of Dom Perignon, however, at a 2004 auction at Christie's in New York City, three bottles of Dom Pérignon 1921 sold for US $24 675.
I bet this find would eclipse that.
I'd sell maybe one, keep six. At least enough to share a drink whenever something great happens, for the rest of my life.
QuoteSunken treasure never tasted so good.
Divers earlier this week discovered about 30 bottles of centuries-old champagne in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. It is thought to be the world's oldest drinkable champagne.
The bubbly possibly dates back to the 1780s and is believed to be the top brand Veuve Clicquot.
It has remained perfectly preserved 180 feet deep on the seabed and "tasted fantastic," according to one wine expert.
Each bottle could be worth as much as $65,000 or more a piece if the authenticity can be verified. Samples have been sent to laboratories in France for testing.
A group of Swedish divers made the tasty find on July 6 off Aaland Island, midway between Sweden and Finland.
Aaland wine expert Ella Cromwell-Morgan tasted the find, which she described as dark golden in color with an intense aroma.
"I still have a glass in my fridge and keep going back every five minutes to take a breath of it," she said. "I have to pinch myself to believe it's real."
One going theory is that the bubbly was part of consignment sent by King Louis XVI to Peter the Great that never reached its destination.
"If it's really Louis XVI's wine," Cromwell-Morgan said, "it could fetch several million."
I've heard that actually lots of the really, really old "re-discovered" champange tastes like shit. It's not like scotch, where age generally improves...beyond a certain point, they go downhill real quick.
That tripped my skeptic button. Wine tasters' opinions of wine seems to be highly correlated with it's perceived worth. I'd like to see how it did in a blind test.
They'd have found me yelling at penguins about the evils of conformity and likely covered in my own piss for warmth.
no bottles would have been recovered.
Quote from: The Dancing Pickle on January 17, 2011, 09:57:49 PM
They'd have found me yelling at penguins about the evils of conformity and likely covered in my own piss for warmth.
no bottles would have been recovered.
While I would not have been forthcoming about the find, I would have nursed it like a newborn babe.
I would have put them in storage and gone in search of a master who could teach me to appreciate scotch better.
Quote from: Cain on January 17, 2011, 09:56:02 PM
I've heard that actually lots of the really, really old "re-discovered" champange tastes like shit. It's not like scotch, where age generally improves...beyond a certain point, they go downhill real quick.
In this case they were kept really cold, I suppose that would help prevent deterioration.
But I thought that scotch only really ages properly when it's stored in a barrel? At least that's what I was told at the liquor store when we were going to buy a good bottle of scotch for a friend that just became a parent, with the idea that the kid could have real nice X+18 year old scotch when he'd turn 18. The liquor store man said it would undoubtedly keep fine, but that if it's kept in a glass bottle, nothing really interesting would happen to the taste.
If that's the case, then the scotch should be handed over to some kind of scotch historian, so that details about it can be recorded for posterity.
I would love a taste but I've being good of late. Sorta have too..... I hate it. Fuck them bastards.
Quote from: Sigmatic on January 18, 2011, 12:54:28 AM
If that's the case, then the scotch should be handed over to some kind of scotch historian, so that details about it can be recorded for posterity.
Me! Me! I'm a Scotch Historian! :evil:
Too bad scotch doesn't age once it's removed from the barrel and put in glass bottles, right?
-Suu
Shattering dreams since 1982
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 18, 2011, 12:10:56 AM
Quote from: Cain on January 17, 2011, 09:56:02 PM
I've heard that actually lots of the really, really old "re-discovered" champange tastes like shit. It's not like scotch, where age generally improves...beyond a certain point, they go downhill real quick.
In this case they were kept really cold, I suppose that would help prevent deterioration.
But I thought that scotch only really ages properly when it's stored in a barrel? At least that's what I was told at the liquor store when we were going to buy a good bottle of scotch for a friend that just became a parent, with the idea that the kid could have real nice X+18 year old scotch when he'd turn 18. The liquor store man said it would undoubtedly keep fine, but that if it's kept in a glass bottle, nothing really interesting would happen to the taste.
That is true. In this particular case, the scotch wont have improved any. I had more in mind shipwrecks and the like, where they were sometimes transported by barrel. Champagne, on the other hand, ages more like red wine (as I understand it). While the conditions on the bottom of the ocean and in all these undiscovered cellars are usually quite good for the aging process...there really is a cut-off point where you need to start bringing champagne out of its hole and drinking it.
Expensive, 300 year old vinegar. Om nom nom!