I grew up without liquor around, but with Asterix books. I read of fine vintages like 62 BC. I forgot the stories are set in 55 BC. I assumed good wine was aged for hundreds or thousands of years.
Even today it is exceedingly rare to find a still-well-conditioned bottle of wine that has the capability to have aged for 117 years or so. Most often sweet wines are capable of this.
A fun read is Benjamin Wallace's The Billionaire's Vinegar. Ostensibly it's about the then-most expensive bottle of wine sold, a bottle supposedly owned by Benjamin Franklin, but it's a good tour through expensive wines and old wines. It's from 2008 so I imagine most of the superlatives are outdated and some of the detecting tech might be improved, but a fine enough read.
Some good lines, perhaps most relevantly: "A truism about mature wines is that there are no great wines, only great bottles."
Old wine is a beautiful thing. I've mentioned this on HN before, but wine is a lot hardier than most people think and it is quite possible to age many wines for a century at home. There are many factors that influence whether a wine can be reliably aged - too many to list in a comment - but if you buy a bottle of Vintage Port, Madeira, or Sauternes, it will be enjoyable for decades at the very least.
If anyone here is curious about old wine and wants to drink some together - my email is in my profile.
I feel like they could also probably take a miniscule sample (like a cubic mm) without upsetting things. That should be enough to do all kinds of analysis.
Unlike a bottle of wine, the sun is an electromagnetic energy source. Without accessing the wine its chemical composition is unknown. Consider medical diagnostics like MRIs and CT scans ... they detect density and shape, but for a biopsy you need tissue.
The best wine I ever tasted was from a bottle of Montrachet fetched from the cellar of friends of a new girlfriend, saved for a special occasion which apparently was them meeting me, which added a nice glow to it.
The oldest reliably drinkable wine is a white wine from 1472, stored in a 450-liter barrel in the cellars of the Hospices de Strasbourg in France. The wine has only been tasted three times throughout its history:
1576: To celebrate a Swiss alliance.
1718: After a hospital fire.
1944: To commemorate the city's liberation from Nazi occupation.
The 1576 event was perhaps the earliest example of deliveroo. As part of a major shooting tournament, a delegation from Zurich travelled by boat to deliver a cauldron of hot millet porridge to the city, to prove they could reach Strasbourg swiftly (in just 18 hours) and still keep the porridge warm. This was a diplomatic performance reinforcing the Protestant alliance and mutual support between Strasbourg and Zurich during the Reformation.
It has actually been drank at least once more, by two French oenologists in 1994:
>La verdeur du vieillard
En 1994, une analyse du vin de 1472 a été réalisée par deux oenologues, MM. Lobre et Windholtz, prouvant « que c’est encore du vin » et non pas « une mixture bonne à assaisonner » une batavia. Le nez a été jugé « puissant, très fin et d’une grande complexité ». En bouche, ils ont relevé des notes de vanille, de miel, de cire, de camphre et de noisette. Alors qu’un « vin normal » possède 20 g d’extraits secs, celui des hospices strasbourgeois dépasse les 45 g ! Conclusion : « Ce vieillard a conservé une étonnante verdeur », 538 ans après sa naissance.
Readit News
> The vessel contained five liters of wine mixed with the cremains of the deceased and a gold ring at the bottom.
Interesting that someone wished to spend the afterlife in wine.
Some good lines, perhaps most relevantly: "A truism about mature wines is that there are no great wines, only great bottles."
If anyone here is curious about old wine and wants to drink some together - my email is in my profile.
(Tongue in cheek, but only partially)
These contaminants might ruin the wine for whatever purpose they are saving it for.
1576: To celebrate a Swiss alliance.
1718: After a hospital fire.
1944: To commemorate the city's liberation from Nazi occupation.
>La verdeur du vieillard En 1994, une analyse du vin de 1472 a été réalisée par deux oenologues, MM. Lobre et Windholtz, prouvant « que c’est encore du vin » et non pas « une mixture bonne à assaisonner » une batavia. Le nez a été jugé « puissant, très fin et d’une grande complexité ». En bouche, ils ont relevé des notes de vanille, de miel, de cire, de camphre et de noisette. Alors qu’un « vin normal » possède 20 g d’extraits secs, celui des hospices strasbourgeois dépasse les 45 g ! Conclusion : « Ce vieillard a conservé une étonnante verdeur », 538 ans après sa naissance.
from https://web.archive.org/web/20131103183014/https://www.lalsa...