200-YEAR-OLD WINE from a Subscriber's Collection - Will I survive this?!

Hi, I'm Konstantin Baum, Master of Wine, and I've tasted many aged wines on this channel. The 1916, the 1863, and even the 1845 vintage. But today I'm going to taste a wine that is even older than that, almost 200 years old, and therefore the oldest wine I've ever tasted. And the best thing about it, it's a gift from one of my subscribers. So is he trying to kill me, or is this actually one of the oldest bottles in the world? Taste this. Okay. Looks like he was not joking. This appears to be a bottle of 1825 Madeira. Just so you understand, the grapes for this wine were harvested roughly a hundred years before my grandparents were even born. It was 10 years after Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, and Charles X was King of France. In 1825, John Quincy Adams was elected the sixth president of the United States, and the Locomotion No. 1 became the first public train to carry passengers. One of my subscribers kindly gave me that bottle for me to open and taste on this channel. Well, he actually gave me two bottles. One of them has a big tear across the vintage, which is a bit of an issue. So I'm going to taste this bottle, and I'm going to keep that bottle for reference. So how did these bottles survive 198 years? And is this wine still drinkable, or will this be my last wine tasting? Let's find out. If you look at the bottle itself, you can see that it's old. There are small irregularities in the glass, and there's even oxygen trapped in the bottle. There is basically no punt at the bottom of the bottle, which is pretty much standard for wine bottles nowadays. You can see that the seams where the different pieces of the bottle are melted together are slightly crooked. So it doesn't look standardized. It doesn't look like an industrial production of glass. It looks like a pretty old bottle. The overall condition of the bottle is very good. The capsule is pretty much intact. The fill level is very high, and the label looks pretty great for such an old wine. I mean, this one is slightly torn, but this one is, well, it couldn't be much better. It is unclear, though, when this wine was actually put into this bottle. You see, this is a Madeira wine from the island with the same name of the Moroccan coast. And over there, they keep the wine in barrels for a long time, decades, sometimes even longer than a century before bottling it. The wine gets exposed to heat and small amounts of oxygen, and then becomes basically indestructible. When it comes to information on the label, I don't really see a lot of relevant information. You can see that it is a Madeira, 1825. Like I said, might be the vintage or something else. And you can see the name of the importer, I think. A company from Munich in Germany, I.B. Hinkers or J.B. Hinkers Nachfolger. So that's kind of all I got. It is not uncommon for Madeiras to not have a lot of information on the label, especially old ones, but usually they name the style of wine. So whether it's a Circial, a Malmsee, or Bois, for example. And there's usually also a producer listed, but on this label, there is no producer to be found. My research, however, indicates that I.B. Hinkers did exist. They were a distributor of spirits and wine to Prince Alfons of Bavaria. I found some old invoices from them from 1914. So they were operational back then, but that's kind of all I got. May I add for everyone who watches this video thinking, how weird is it that people buy and sell old wine? They're actually people who buy and sell old invoices. In some online forum, I found an old tasting note for this wine, which rated it five out of five stars. And the tasting note read something along the lines of, Le vin est fort, mais extrêmement équilibré. La douceur n'est pas élevée. So that person basically says, the wine is strong, but very balanced, and the sweetness is not too high. But that's kind of all I got. So I think I just have to open this and, well, and see. So like I said, I'm going to open the damaged bottle, but I think it's pretty clear to see that these wines are exactly the same. So this one should also read 1825. So let's go. So first of all, I'm going to cut this capsule to see what is underneath. Probably have to scrape it off. Those old capsules, they kind of deteriorate at some point. There tends to be some lead in those old capsules, so I want to avoid drinking that. Yeah, this was kind of easy. The cork looks pretty outstanding. To be honest, this does not necessarily look like a 200-year-old cork, but the good thing is that I might not even need my port tongs today. I can just use this. So the Durand is my favorite tool when it comes to opening old bottles. It's basically one corkscrew, and this thing here that, well, combined will usually make it much easier to get old corks out of bottles, unless I mess it up again. Let's see. Oftentimes, these old corks just fall into the bottle as soon as you touch it with your corkscrew because they lose their elasticity, and, well, they just don't expand enough anymore. But this one is actually sitting in there pretty tightly. So now let's get this in here. And now the moment of truth. Just turn it carefully. Relax, Konstantin. It's all good. This looks pretty good, and it does look old. And I can already smell the Madeira. Okay, this is a very short cork. Very short. But what does it mean for the quality of the wine? Not a lot, to be honest. I don't really know. I mean, I've seen quite a lot longer corks in those old bottles, but I've also seen short ones. So this is not necessarily telling me much. Unfortunately, there's no information on the cork, but actually that's probably also a good sign because back in the days, they didn't really brand the corks or put information onto the corks. It smells delicious, though. So now let's taste this. I'm really looking forward to this, even though I don't really know all that much about this wine. It's definitely very old, and it looks beautiful. Yes, this smells amazing. This smells, well, it's hard to put it into words, but it smells like history. But it also smells like raisins, like toffee. There's a little bit of, well, a flavor that reminds me a little bit of glue, but just a touch of that. There's nougat, chocolate. So there's a lot going on there. The wine also has a slight green tinge towards the rim, which is pretty typical for Madeira. There are small pieces floating around there. So even though Madeira doesn't throw a lot of deposit, usually it does throw some deposit. So you can see that in the glass. It keeps evolving and changing, and it's amazing to see that, like, something this old, once opened, is still so alive and so vibrant and, well, shows so much complexity. Oftentimes, old wines kind of dull down and become less interesting, but this is still very much there. Just kidding. It has pretty much perfect balance between sweetness, this raisiny character and the sweet notes, and this super fresh, very lively acidity. So this is from the time when they didn't have to put the alcohol level on the bottle. So I can only guess. I mean, this will definitely have elevated alcohol levels somewhere around the 20% or 20 ABV mark, but it's very well integrated. The acidity is still very much there. There is so much balance there. So what style of wine could this be? I'm not 100% sure. It is, due to this acidity, I would probably say it's more of a Boal or Verdeiro style because there's quite a bit of sweetness there, but also there's lots of freshness. But at this age, it's kind of difficult to distinguish between the different categories. There's no cream flavors coming through, peaches. It's getting more and more exciting. So I'm pretty sure that this bottle, over time, will become even better, more complex, more interesting. So this is delicious. You know, I can actually go out there and tell people that this is work. It is not. This is an experience, extraordinary. Thank you very much, Sebastian, for sharing this bottle with me and allowing me to share it with all of you. So I'm going to rate this wine 99 points. I think it's not quite perfect, but it is absolutely outstanding. And maybe the fact that I still don't 100% know whether this is 1825 vintage or not kind of screws my scoring slightly because this is a beautiful wine. All right, this was another outstanding wine tasting experience. I think the most amazing thing about this, though, is that I have an audience who appreciates my content enough for them to bring me a bottle of this amazing wine, allowing me to taste it in order to make sure that I can share it with the world. Thank you, guys. I appreciate that so, so much. I need to say thank you to Sebastian and I'm going to his hotel and, well, tell him about his wine. So, Sebastian, your wine was not good. Oh. It was great. Oh, wow. It was delicious. That's amazing. So tell me a little bit about the story behind this bottle or those two bottles. How did you get them? Yeah, at some point I started to collect wines and spirits and I was browsing the internet because my intention was to get the oldest possible wine, which is possible to buy. And I saw this label, 1825, and I thought maybe it could be a good bargain. Just the problem was I had no idea if it's authentic and also if it's really from 1825. So at some point I came across your YouTube videos and I saw that you tasted another Madeira wine from 1845 and I thought, who else could be a good person to evaluate this wine? Yeah, you came to the right place. That's for sure. I actually left some for you. That's for sure. The bottle is not empty and the other one is still untouched. Thank you so, so much. Yeah, thank you too. I will be very curious to taste it on my own because I never tasted it yet. So I'm waiting for that. Thank you very much too. Yeah, you will have fun with it, I'm sure. So thank you for watching. If you liked this video, please like it down here. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so already. The question of the day is, what do you think? Is this 1825 Madeira or not? Let me know down below. I hope I see you guys again very soon. Until then, stay thirsty. And I'm going to so finish this glass. And maybe I'll pour myself another one. Bye.