1861 Wine - TRASH or TREASURE? Tasting RARE Cellar Findings

I get a lot of messages on Instagram that go a little like this. I found these bottles in my grandfather's cellar. Do you think they are any good? Or my parents have left me their wine collection. Do you think I will survive tasting these wines? So today I'm going to show you how to separate the delicious from the dead, the good from the bad, and the trash from the treasure by going through these four wines. One is roughly 20, one is 50, one is 60, and one is 160 years old. And I'm going to explain to you how to avoid picking up a spoiled bottle. Let's go. Wine is a magical product. It can get better over time and improve over the years, but there's a moment in time when even the best wine turns to vinegar. Regardless, when it comes to old cellars, many people have the expectation that they've hit gold when they inherit a collection. In many cases, your grandparents or parents would have sold or opened the wines that are really interesting. And what is left is usually the leftovers. That's not to say that these wines cannot be interesting, but in most cases, those leftover wines are either too old, were stored in a bad condition, or might have never been really good. So let's go through these four wines, and I'm going to explain to you why I think they might be trash or treasures. The youngest out of the bunch is the 2007 La Roche-Vieilles Vignes Chablis from Burgundy. And I got this at a restaurant sale. They were closing the restaurant, and I picked up some interesting-looking bottles. So one indicator why I think this might be good is that Chablis is a great wine-growing region. It's part of Burgundy. It's high up in the north. And the wines, if they are good, can actually mature quite graciously and for years and years. So the region is definitely a plus. The grape variety that is used here is Chardonnay. Chardonnay is considered to be one of the, if not the most high-end white grape variety in the world. But in my opinion, Chardonnay doesn't really age all that well. There are certainly some examples of Chardonnays that can age. But in my opinion, most Chardonnays are best after a few years and don't really have the legs to survive for decades. So in this case, the grape variety is not necessarily a plus, but it's also not all negative. This wine is 16 years old, so it's not very, very old. And I think it might still be good. If this was a Chardonnay from a Premier Cru or Grand Cru side, I would have higher expectations, but this isn't. I mean, it says Vieilles Vignes, which means old vines, but this doesn't necessarily mean all that much. A Premier Cru or Grand Cru Chardonnay would usually be able to survive for longer than a generic Chablis. So I would also look at the producer, which is La Roche in this case. La Roche isn't one of the greatest producers in Chablis. So, well, this doesn't necessarily help me all that much. What is quite interesting about this wine is the closure. The screw cap isn't necessarily looked at as the most high-end closure in the world for wine. Natural cork usually is still considered to be better, which isn't actually true. But when it comes to ageability, I find that wines closed under a screw cap are actually lasting for longer. This might be due to the fact that the wine is sealed better. Natural cork can vary in terms of quality, so there might be a higher risk of oxidation with natural cork. So I actually think the screw cap might have really helped the wine in order to make sure it survives the test of time. But you never really know until you've opened that bottle, so let's check it out. Interesting. So the wine is actually golden in color, which is very normal for white wine. White wine tends to turn brown over time. In the beginning, it turns from straw yellow to golden, and this actually looks exactly how you would want an aged Chardonnay to look like. This one is delicious. I actually don't know whether it has ever tasted better than it tastes now, because I haven't tasted the younger version, but I would say this is absolutely in its drinking window. You know when wine critics rate a wine, they usually give you a drinking window for each wine, which spans a few years usually. In this case, I don't think anyone would have had the balls back then to say drink until 2023. Usually, people are a bit more conservative when it comes to giving that drinking window, but this is still delicious. It smells of lemon tart. There's also like a waxy element coming through. On the palate, it's actually round and rich with a lot of fresh and vibrant acidity to finish off the wine. Delicious. So this was definitely a treasure, but it was also the youngest wine in the tasting. So let's see how the old timers do. So next we have the 1976 Weingut der Stadt Allsai, Allsaier Kapellenberg, Huxelrebe, Spätlese, from Germany, of course. Germany has the reputation of producing pretty age-worthy wines, but that is mainly linked to Riesling. They have used Huxelrebe, which is a crossing that was created in 1927. The grape variety was named after Fritz Huxel, who didn't come up with the crossing, but he promoted this grape variety in the 1950s, and it became kind of popular, but today it only represents less than 1% of all vineyards planted. So Huxelrebe doesn't actually sound great, but then you look at the vintage, 1976. According to Wine Spectator, that year was one of the best of the second half of the 20th century. They write the wines were ripe, powerful, and full of botrytis, and that sounds much better. The thing, though, with vintage ratings is that they just give you the general tendency of a year. If the winemaker messes up, the wine can still taste horrible, even if the vintage was great. But generally, if the vintage was very good, the wine tends to be good, too. What gives me extra hope is that this is a spätlese, a style of wine that tends to be a little bit sweet or really sweet, depending on the winemaking. It could also be a dry spätlese, because there's no alcohol level on here. If you see like an alcohol level of 13 1⁄2 and the term spätlese, that suggests that it's actually dry. If the alcohol is at 9%, for example, you can be pretty sure that there's some residual sugar there. But weirdly, I don't know, in 1976, they didn't have to put the alcohol level on the label, apparently, so I don't really know. But I'd guess that this has some sugar in it. You might wonder, how good are the wines from the Weingut der Stadt Allsee in general? And I actually didn't know this producer before. I checked on their website. They still produce a Huxlrebe. It retails for seven euros something, so not necessarily high-end wine. But maybe back then, they were producing the really good stuff. You never know. Another thing, though, is that this was not necessarily in the time when German wine was really, really great. You know, during that period, quite a lot of wineries were just producing wine in bulk, not focusing on quality, but on quantity. This is such a weird capsule. It could be wax, but it could also be plastic. I don't really know what this is supposed to be. Check this out. I think it's actually plastic, a plastic capsule. And that cork, oh. So that cork doesn't look good at all. It just looks like it's deteriorating. It's really wet. So if you have, like, humidity coming from the cork, that's never a good sign. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the wine is bad already. I will try to get the cork out with my corkscrew, but maybe that's not a good idea. Okay, the cork is coming out, but it looks quite disgusting, but maybe. It's definitely falling apart. Look at that. It's breaking, but I'll still try. No risk, no fun. Oh, I think I got it. Yeah, I got it out in one piece, even though I don't think I can screw it off without it falling apart completely. But yeah, this is a mushy cork. So let's try to get it off, because I need that corkscrew. But yeah, this is just falling apart. Ugh, man, yeah. Okay, I'm still hopeful that the wine might be okay, but when the cork looks like that, it suggests that something leaked out. So some wine probably came out of the bottle and also something came into the bottle. So oxygen might have penetrated the cork and some microbes might be in the wine as well, turning it into vinegar. So, well, let's just try it and keep our fingers crossed. So if this wine is really brown, that would suggest it's gone. So let's see. It's brown. It's really brown. So this looks like Madeira. It is really brown. It looks like diluted coffee. But yeah, I mean, there's still a chance that this might be okay. After 50 years, wine tends to be quite brown. This is very brown. So yeah, but there's still a chance. The wine actually reminds me of a Madeira. So it is brown. It smells of toffee, caramel. On the palate, there's some sugar there. Lacks a little bit of acidity. So this, I could drink it, but it's not very enjoyable. People often wonder if you can get poisoned from old wine. And the answer is not really. I mean, obviously, if you drink liters of it, there's still alcohol in there, so you can get alcohol poisoning. But wine doesn't spoil like fresh fish, so you don't get food poisoning from drinking really old wine. The thing is just that this is not very enjoyable anymore. I mean, it lacks freshness. It lacks fruit. It lacks concentration and length. I don't think it was ever a great wine. It probably wasn't designed to be aged for 50 years. So it's not the fault of the winemaker. It's the fault of me only opening it now. The residual sugar in this wine would have helped it a little bit, but it just wasn't enough to really keep it together. Residual sugar can conserve wine, and really sweet wines, therefore, can age for decades or even longer than a century. But in this case, it just wasn't enough. So next up, we have the 1969 Affenthaler Spätburgunder Weisherbst from the Winzergenossenschaft That's a long name. This one actually won the golden medallion of the Badische Winzerverband. And it also has the which translates to seal of approval for bad quality wine. But in this case, bad means baddish from the region of Baden. They probably wouldn't put it on there like that anymore. It also says which I think back in those days was an indicator that it wasn't chapitalized. But today, natural wine is obviously a whole different story. So if you find a bottle like that in a wine collection, it's a pretty strong indicator that the collection overall wasn't really well managed. This is a wine that definitely wasn't made to be aged. A Weisherbst is like a rosé wine. And this coming from a Winzergenossenschaft, a co-op, probably was not something that you would have wanted to drink after more than two or three years. So this is with high likelihood trash. But let's taste it first. So 1969 was apparently also a very good year. So maybe I'm wrong. But you know, rosés, I mean, there are some exceptions. Some rosés that can age for a few years, maybe even for more than a decade. But it's very unlikely that this rosé is still good after close to 60 years of aging. The cork actually looks better than the one on the 1976. And that's the thing with cork. It's a natural product. So sometimes it works really well for a very long time. And sometimes it fails after a very short period. You never really know. But when it almost falls into the bottle, right, when you touch it, that's not a good sign. Luckily, this isn't my first rodeo. Another thing I wanted to mention is the allergy level. In this case, it is actually fairly low. As soon as it drops into the bottle, out of the neck, into the bottle, it kind of suggests that the wine might have turned bad. There's just too much surface area in the bottle reacting to the oxygen, to the air in the top of the bottle. On top of that, this wine must have gone somewhere. It might have evaporated through the cork, but there is maybe also a little bit of leakage there. From the sides, the cork doesn't look as good. It's kind of breaking to pieces here. This is not good, not good. I can also smell some porch and vinegar flavor coming from that bottle. So there you go. Not a bad cork for a Weisherbst. Today, they would probably use smaller corks than this. Remember, this is a Weisherbst, so a rosé wine made from Spätburgunder. And well, it tends to be like onion skin colored, a light rosé. So I haven't had a rosé this old, I think. So is it brown? Is it green? Is it yellow? I don't know. Let's find out. That's a pretty disgusting color, gotta be honest. It looks really brown and slightly cloudy. So this is what rosé turns into after a while. Interesting. There's definitely less fruit there, even than in the previous wine, which was also not very fruity. This just smells really old, like prunes maybe, a little bit of prunes, a little bit of cold coffee, but that's it. I'm actually not sure whether I want to taste this. This might be one of the first times on this channel, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Oh, no. This actually tastes rancid. It tastes like it has gone bad. So maybe this is a wine that has gone bad, a wine that could actually kill you. I don't know. It tastes like something that could kill you. It tastes of vinegar, so there's some acidity there, but it doesn't feel like it's the acidity from the grape, but more like the acidity that developed from... So if you ever want to taste a 50-point wine, seek out this, Affenthaler Spätburgunder Weisherbst, 1969. Good luck. So last but not least, we have this, the Burmester Tordis Alto Duro Ultra Reserve from the vintage of 1861. So some of you know that I've tasted a port wine made by Burmester that was from the 1863 vintage and was absolutely delicious, but this has been sitting on my shelf for a while. The issue with this wine is that it might actually be good. I mean, some of these port wines can age for a very long, long, long, long time, as the 1863 proved, which was absolutely delicious, but here we have a very low level. So there's quite a bit of port wine missing here, and the cork is broken. I don't really know why the cork is broken. I don't know why there's wine missing here. It could be that wine seeped out of the bottle through the cork over the decades or more than a century, and therefore there's not a full bottle here, or that someone pulled the cork, poured some glasses, and pushed another cork back into the bottle. I don't know, I don't know. Doesn't matter, maybe. I mean, if someone pulled the cork and poured a few glasses and then pushed something back in, there's a high likelihood that this is spoiled by now, because it has been sitting for a few years in my cellar, and I think it was in another cellar for a few years, so usually wine doesn't keep that well once the cork is popped. If there was some leakage, there is a possibility that this is still good. I mean, those port wines, they tend to be very stable, and they tend to be very high in alcohol, and they have some residual sugar, so they can survive for a while. So this apparently was aged in barrels. It actually says on the bottle Envelhecido M. Casco. I'm sorry, I completely butchered that, but that means aged in barrel, and it's an ultra-reserver, which is a term that isn't used anymore as far as I know, but which might indicate that it was aged for a long time. This, again, gives the wine extra legs when it comes to maturation in bottle. If a wine is exposed to small amounts of oxygen in barrel, it tends to conserve the wine for further maturation, so wines that were aged in barrels can keep for longer than wines that were aged in stainless steel, for example. So if you find old Madeiras or Sherry in a cellar, the chances are pretty high that the wine might still be good, not necessarily if it looks like this, but if the bottle looks okay, probably you're in for a treat. That said, those wines don't tend to be super valuable. They usually don't increase as much in value as high-end Bordeaux, for example, or high-end wines from Burgundy or Champagne. They tend to be fairly stable in terms of quality, but also in terms of price. So let's see whether I can get this out. I can't. What happened there? Okay, so the cork just fell in. That's a major fail. Damn it. I should have gotten out my Portox. You know, all of you guys always beating up on me because I can't use Portox, and now I didn't use them, and see what happened. That's your fault. Well, not really. It's my fault. I messed this up. But that said, if the cork falls into the bottle, it doesn't mean that the wine is spoiled. I mean, the wine was in contact with the cork anyway. So let's just pretend nothing happened, and let's pour a glass. This actually looks a lot better than the Weisherbst. A lot. And this is 160 years old. More than 160 years old. It has this maha, maha, ma, it has this mahagon, mahagon. Mahogany. Mahogany color. Delicious. Looks great. It smells weird. It doesn't smell like super old wine. It smells like wax and like walnuts. Like, like just dried walnuts. So I think if this wasn't aged like this, if there wasn't like this much air left in the bottle, it might actually be still quite nice. It's delicious on the palate. I mean, the nose is kind of, it's gone on the nose. But on the palate, it's juicy. It's quite a lot of acidity there as well. It's like really zingy, lively. Really, really good. There's even soy sauce coming out of this glass. This is fascinating. Really fresh. Really, well, interesting. It's not, yeah, it's interesting. It's not delicious, but it's really interesting. But on the palate, this acidity, it's crazy. It's really, it's like Riesling acidity. Really racy, long and fresh finish. The sweetness is there, but it actually feels like a cabinet almost. Like it doesn't feel rich. It feels lively and fruity. This is actually really exciting. A very interesting wine. Just very different. And this kind of represents the opportunities that you can have in those cellars. Sometimes you come across bottles that might be bad, but they might also be still really interesting. This is certainly not at its top, and that's due to the aging, the way it was treated and handled. Because I think the wine in and of itself would have aged much better. But still, tasting this gives you an impression of the potential of that wine. So a nice bottle, a nice looking bottle, would probably still be delicious. All right, in summary, corks can be an issue. Sometimes they're difficult to get out, and sometimes they just fall into the wine. And many times they can't survive long enough in order to protect what is inside the bottle. And secondly, be adventurous. Try some of these wines that you find in your relative cellar. Some might be trash, like these two, especially this one, which was absolutely disgusting. But some might be treasures, like this 2007 Chablis, which was delicious, and this port wine from 1861, which wasn't performing on its peak anymore, but it was still a lot of fun. And tasting this balance between the sweetness and the acidity is an experience that I will never forget. So thank you for watching. If you like this video, then please like it on here. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so already. My question of the day is, do you have some trash or treasures in your cellar? Let me know down below which bottles you probably should pour out and which ones you should open today. I hope I see you guys again very soon. Until then, stay thirsty.