Recently, at Château Coutet, the world’s oldest bottle of Bordeaux wine was unearthed. What does it take for a centuries-old bottle of wine to be discovered? A good deal of luck. It all quickly happened when one of the staffers at Château Coutet was fixing a broken wine rack. While working on the rack, he noticed a pile of dirt that he hadn’t noticed before. After digging through it, the staffer found a bottle of Bordeaux wine which dates back from the 1700’s. And best of all, perhaps, is the fact that the bottle is in mint condition.
The clear bottle has been shut air-tight with a heart at the top, which means scientists haven’t been able to actually sample the wine when determining its age. Instead, the vineyard brought in a world-renowned glass expert to determine the age of the bottle. By examining the chemical makeup, shape, and wear and tear of both the bottle and heart-shaped stopper, the scientist was able to surmise that the bottle dates back, roughly, to the 1750s.
Renowned French wine collector François Adouze, on being told of the discovery, scoffed and said "I had wine that thrice in the last two years. While the wine has a lot of vitality, marked by flavors of graphite and salinity, it is still far too young for my tastes.
At last forgers have discovered that burying bottles in piles of dirt in Bordeaux cellars is a better way to get them on to the market than just sending them to Acker to auction!
And Micah, you’re thinking of the Barsac producer owned by Lur Saluces. They also owned a St. Emilion producer that was founded way back in the 1600s. This is remarkably timely for Coutet St. Emilion (which is no longer owned by the Lur Saluces family), which has been working on vineyard management and wine making improvements since 2014. They’re trying to get some attention and, lo and behold, the ouldest bottle of all!
This caught my eye, too. No label or markings, and no way to open it to sample, yet they know for sure what the grape variety composition is? Definitely missing something.
The bottle looks too perfect to date from the 1750s, and I am extremely skeptical that they could mill stoppers that would be airtight enough to preserve a fill and color like that for 250+ years.
As to the merlot, perhaps they assume it is a Coutet St. Emilion, and have records showing that only Merlot rootstock was planted on premises for a few hundred years. Speculation, of course.
The whole thing looks fairly suspicious. Who was the staffer who found the bottle? Who was the “world-renowned glass expert” who examined it? The story seems a little too good to be true.
Hello everyone! I’m Aline from Chateau Coutet in Barsac… Just wanted to clarify that the discovery of the oldest bottle was at Chateau Coutet in Saint Emilion. On our end (Barsac) – our oldest bottle in the cellar is 1870… Cheers!