The aftertaste of time

Few people expect wine bottles that have been forgotten for decades to become treasures of collectors. That journey shows that time is not always the destroyer. Sometimes, time is the most patient artisan.

From forgotten wine cellars to auction records

Glamis Castle in Scotland is famous for its ghostly legends, connections with the British Royal Family and is said to be the inspiration for Shakespeare's Macbeth tragedy. But what fascinates wine collectors lies deep underground, in an ancient wine cellar that is almost forgotten.

Here, dozens of Bordeaux bottles from the 19th century have been lying idle for decades. Among them are 2 large bottles (magnum) Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1870. When put up for auction at Sotheby's in April, they quickly became the focus of an event called "Immortal Vintages".

Initially, experts only estimated that each bottle could reach a price of about 50,000 USD. But reality has far exceeded all predictions. The first bottle was sold for more than 106,250 USD (equivalent to about 2.8 billion VND), setting a world record for the same year and capacity wine. Just a few minutes later, the second bottle continued to break that record when closing at 200,000 USD (equivalent to about 5.2 billion VND), the result of fierce competition between collectors via phone and online.

2 bottles of wine alone brought in more than 306,000 USD, while the entire auction including more than 250 batches dating back two centuries brought in over 2 million USD.

Few people would have thought that those expensive wine bottles were once forgotten in a wine cellar that today is only used as a warehouse for supplies and labor.

155-year-old wine bottle

The story began in 1878, when Count Strathmore the 13th bought 48 bottles of Lafite Rothschild year 1870 and kept them in the cellar. According to recorded records, he did not like this wine because it was too strongly astringent. After his death, his successors also did not touch that wine.

The oblivion lasted for nearly a century.

In the early 1970s, when legendary wine expert Michael Broadbent came to survey a Christie's auction, he accidentally discovered this treasure. Before deciding to put them on the market, Broadbent opened a bottle.

What he witnessed surprised the entire professional community. The wine ink is almost intact, the bottle cap is still firm, the color is deep and dark, the fragrance is wonderful and shows no signs of oxidation or spoilage. More importantly, its flavor still maintains an incredible balance.

That is rare for a bottle of wine that has turned 100 years old at the time of discovery.

According to Sotheby's experts, 1870 Lafite bottles from the Glamis Castle wine cellar are now considered the best preserved specimens still alive in the world for this year. That is what makes them the standard that collectors always mention.

But their value is not only in rarity.

Lafite 1870 also belongs to the wine generation produced before the aphid epidemic that swept through European vineyards in the late 19th century. This small insect attacked the vine roots, destroying vast vineyards, including Bordeaux.

To save the wine industry, European grape varieties were forced to be grafted onto disease-resistant rootstocks from the US. This method is still applied to this day. Many experts believe that root grafting has changed the biological properties of grapevines, thereby affecting the flavor of wine.

That also means that the 1870 Lafite bottles are made from original vines, not yet grafted. Many researchers believe that they retain the style of reverberation that disappeared from the modern world more than a century ago.

Value of time

Jason Tesauro, a wine taser and writer, photographer, once had the opportunity to enjoy a bottle of 1870 Lafite at a private event in 2023.

He said that it was a rare experience that is still intact in his sensory memory.

On the banquet table that day there were many bottles of wine that for most wine lovers, seeing was a lifelong privilege. But all were overshadowed by the 1870 Lafite bottle.

Tesauro compares that experience to admiring a movie star at the age of 90. People no longer seek the beauty of their twenties, but seek the traces of time, experience and history imprinted on every line.

What amazed him was that after more than 150 years, the wine still retains the fruit fragrance. Not faint aftertastes or distant memories, but vivid signals of a grape season that had taken place since 1870.

Perhaps that is also the reason why such auctions always attract two special groups of people. One is collectors who want to own rare artifacts. The other is those who aspire to taste history.

Because in each bottle of antique wine, what is bought is not simply a drink. It is a slice of time closed with a button, waiting for many generations to tell their story. And sometimes, that story costs hundreds of thousands of USD. But for wine lovers, the greatest value is still the feeling of touching a world that has passed a long time ago.