This Wine Is 138 Years Old. What happens if I drink it?

Hello there. It's been a long time and I've been doing some treasure hunting, but I haven't found anything. So I've got a video for you and the ground is so hard because of the weather being so hot that it's hard to dig it as well. So, you know, anyway, but I have this little problem that might have a delicious ending to it. So I'm going to take you down into my wine cellar and show you. So let's go in. So I've got a few bottles in here. That's quite a big bottle. I don't know how I can drink all that in one go. Now when you've got a lot of old bottles like these from the sixties and the seventies, every now and again, one of them will go wrong. There's one, for example, where the cork's gone out or gone in. That one's all right. But every now and again, that one there, the cork is going in. Now it's probably because it's fermenting again. That's from 1967. Anyway, these things happen. And when they do, the best thing to do is to drink them. We're not going to drink that one, but I'm going to have to drink one particular bottle, which is going to make me sad. But if it's any good, it's going to make me happy. So let me show you. So here is 1888 Cantonac Brown. You take a better look of it upstairs. So here we are. And there's Louis. Louis, what are you doing here? So this is the bottle and there's Louis. Hello, Louis. You'll have a glass with me. So here we have the gear. So this, which is a must have if you have old bottles of wine. I'll show you that later. And this for getting the foils off. I'll show you that later. We've got a magnum here. So we're going to need two carats and we're not going to need an aerator. That's for sure. So first of all, we're going to take this top off and that wasn't very difficult. So there we are. Oh, and that cork is loose. That cork is very loose. I'm going to get a knife. I'm just going to take some of the crud off around here to make it a bit easier. You can see it's been leaking out through the cork and there's the cork. So this is the gadget. That you need, and it looks like a torture device, but it's the only way you can get the cork out of these sort of bottles. So first of all, you put the screw in. Now, what happens is if you put a normal corkscrew in, as you pull it out, it will crack in half and out it will come leaving half in. You don't want that. Now you can use these and you can put that around the edge. When a cork like this, the cork will go in. So you don't want that either. So first of all, you fix the cork with this gadget. Oh, you see, look, that just went in. It's that loose. Now, of course, in these circumstances, I think we're going to lose this cork. No, maybe not. That's going in. So with a bit of luck, we'll get the whole cork out. Now, I just screw this right in and that should hold the cork. Now this goes down the side of the cork, so I can now twist the whole cork out and it won't break because the corkscrew has gone all the way through the cork. So that's the theory. And this is the practice. Now, there's two holes down the side of the corkscrew, but that's for storage, not for operating it. So now we should have the ability to take the whole thing out in one go. Well, not gently, of course. I think it wants to go in more than it wants to come out. This cork, of course, is 140 years old. What I would often do with these corks is just take the cork out as it's breaking. And I can now actually, if I wanted to, I could actually take out the piece. Well, I'm going to be quiet here, just going to try to get it out in one piece. There you go. And that was one piece. As near as we're going to get to one piece anyway. OK, so now the trick is when I'm going to tilt the bottle, never to tilt it back. Try to get all of it out in one pour. So here we go. There's no point tasting it at this stage because if it's gone, it's gone. It's very brown. Canterlot brown is very brown. I think this is going to be gone. This one, this bottle, unfortunately, not many of them are gone. But this one's got all the signs of being gone. Well, that's what I call sediment. So let's have a smell. Not vinegary. That's good. It's a good sign. We put this in here. This will have to be drunk. Well, we don't know when it's going to be drunk. And here we go. Let's have a taste of. So 1888, so that's 112 years plus 26. So that's 130, 138 years. Yes, 138 years. Let's see what it tastes like. It's all right. It's actually nice. It's actually really nice. Now, old wine does not taste like new wine. Old wine tastes very, very different. And this is obviously a very, very ancient wine. So if it's a nice drink, it's a nice drink. You don't go, oh, not very fruity, but it's also not very red. So I'm going to pour another glass for my darling wife, who's the camera woman in this. And we're going to drink it together. I did not think this was going to work out because it's brown. It's got lots and lots of sediment in it, which is normally a sign that it's kind of turned to vinegar. But this is not turned to vinegar. No, it's not turned to vinegar at all. It's actually quite mild, nice and fruity. So let me have a go. So it's very light. And it's very sort of grapey, sort of, you know, like it, like grapes before they're very ripe and they're sweet. Just before that's a little sharp. It's very grapey, very, very grapey. I would say the major flavor is grape. And the trouble is with this wine is it will change like every five minutes because, you know, it has I suppose it has had quite a lot of air, actually, because it was a good that much. It was what you might call high shoulder. So it wasn't up to the cork and it wasn't even up to the the bottom of the neck. It's actually down on the shoulder. Let me show you what I mean. And you can see all that sediment. Yeah, that's all sediment. And it was down to about here, which I didn't think it was when I first got it out. So maybe, you know, these things are cool. You can see what happened to it. That's what happened to the cork. Not much left of it after one hundred and thirty eight years. So I got this in the UK. I think it was. Sotheby's, I think it was Sotheby's, maybe it was Christie's, I don't know, I can't remember Bonham's. Don't know one of them anyway. And I hadn't been to the UK for a long time, so I had it sat with a friend. It was laying down in a box. You know, he didn't open the box, but he was undoubtedly laying down. Then he brings it to London and we take it back to France. Well, you know, laying down, standing up, cork can just go into the bottle, often does really old bottles like this. But anyway, it didn't do it. But nonetheless, maybe it loosened the cork up a bit. So we laid it down again, starts to leak out. So maybe it's leaked out. You know, maybe you lost a couple of glasses to the fairies on this case. But anyway, back to the wine. I won't let it sit around. I think it needs to be drunk. Now, I'm not sure how I'm going to drink two bottles of this. But however, having said that, it's much lower alcohol than your normal wine would be. I would be amazed if it was more than, say, six percent, because that's the first thing that evaporates out is the alcohol. I'm trying to put my finger on this smell. It's very vinegary. No, it's grapey. It's just really grapey, unexpectedly grapey. It has a sort of notes of notes. You know, it has a sort of currency flavor as well. Yes, very drinkable. I mean, very, very, very different from a wine you would buy, even if you bought a Cantonette Brown from, say, 10 years ago. It wouldn't taste like this. In fact, this wine would not have been made in the same way as they make Claret these days. It's a completely different process. So this is made how they used to make it, which is, you know, treading with feet. And none of this clever stuff with fermenting. It was, you know, 140 years ago. So really almost completely another world. No cars, no electricity, nothing, nothing like that. So this is basically going back into another world. And I suppose it's not surprising it tastes different not only is it 140 years old, but also made completely different. And in about 1999, they completely changed the way they made wine in Bordeaux. So it would age quicker. So you would have to keep it around for 20 years before it kind of reached the stage where you could actually drink it properly because, you know, modern world is much faster. And people aren't prepared to sit around for 20 years to wait for their wine to become drinkable. Well, I like to leave 140 years before my wine becomes drinkable. I mean, look at the pontil on that. You know, this would this bottle would have been hand blown. And, you know, that's called the pontil, which is like the inverted bit in the bottom of a bottle. And that's deep. That's very, very deep indeed. It's kind of best part of my finger deep. So when this wine was put in the bottle, Vincent van Gogh cut his ear off. I don't think it's in here. And Gauguin worked with him in Arles. And they were building the Eiffel Tower. How about that? And France was digging the Panama Canal. I didn't know that. So this is what they were all amazing years back then, because things were changing so fast, faster than even today, I think. And they were just putting electricity, the first of electricity into Paris when this was going in the bottle. So they wouldn't have had that sort of thing down in Bordeaux. So Gauguin, Zoya. So Zoya, what do you taste in that? Cherry jam. Cherry jam? Well, now you come to mention it. You know, those big red cherries. The ones, is it, what are those cherries called? Do you know? Masin churro, macchi churro, maschino? We don't know. But, you know, the big, heavy sort of cherries you get on a cake. Big, juicy, dark flavouring sort of, you know, like ancient wine flavours. Cherries. That's what I was picking up from this. So grapes, but cherries, it's a deep undertone, heavy flavour. Hmm. I agree. I agree, Zoya. Cherries. So anyway, that's interesting. Flavour gone. I don't mean flavour. I mean, smell gone. That's what happened with a wine like this. It will change taste every five, ten minutes. Well, it's been a bit longer than that. But let's see if, well, the smell has changed, the smell has gone. Now, let's see if I can taste it still. Even more cherry, way more cherry. So it's going from grape to cherry. Now, these really old wines literally will change in front of you and you'll sip them again, there'll be no flavour. You go, oh, it's gone now. And then five minutes later, there'll be another flavour. It'll just appear out of nowhere, like out of smoke. And then it'll be gone again. Now, unfortunately, I've had to put half of the bottle in another carafe because I don't think even I can drink one and a half litres of wine. And even with Zoya, I don't think we can drink a magnum of this. So we'll see what it's like tomorrow in one of them. But I think we'll get through a litre of this because, as I said earlier, won't be much alcohol in there. And well, you know, this is almost two glasses already. I can still talk. Very strong cherry now. What's it going to make for a longer video? Because I thought once I opened it and tasted it, it's going to be vinegar. And that's going to be the end of the video. And it wasn't. It was kind of grapes and grape pips. And then now it's cherries. So I suspect that this is going to turn again, change again in another 10 or 15 minutes, and I'll be right back when it does. So this one is going to have to keep to tomorrow. And this is the one that's going down the hatch tonight. So if you look at that, look at how misty that is. How much sediment there is in there. And that's normally a sign that it's gone. But it hasn't gone. Not even close to going. Well, a lot of people would disagree with me there. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'm going to give you a secret. Let me tell you a secret about wine. When they say it's corked, no such thing as corked. Wine is sat against the cork the whole time when you lay it down. You have to lay it down. If the cork dries out and then your bottle is ruined because it'll run through the cork or the cork, you have to have the wine a little bit on the cork. Funny enough, with Poole or Sherry or Madeira, I'm not sure about Malmsey, but let's say it's the same. Let's just stand it up. You don't lie on the cork. You have to stand the bottle up. I don't know how that works out over a couple of years. But anyway, that's what they say. I don't know. I've got some of that as well, and I lie it down to anyway. Now, so corked, what is corked? Very, very simple. And a French peasant girl taught me this, and I've always kept it close to my heart, and I believe it to be true. A wine is only off when you taste rubber bands. You know, rubber bands, you know how they taste? You must do. If not, chew on a rubber band. That flavor, if the wine tastes of that flavor, it's off. If it doesn't taste of rubber bands, it ain't off. It ain't corked. Now, the only time it's corked, you will know it. And you only ever have to do the following to know. Now, if it doesn't smell foul, it's not off. If it smells of rhubarb, that's just the wine. If it smells of leather, that's just the wine. If it smells of cherries, that's just the wine. If it smells of rubber bands, it's off. If it makes you go, yeah, it's off. If it makes you go, I don't know what this is. It ain't off. And I tell you, I've drunk probably hundreds, definitely hundreds, maybe even thousands of ancient bottles. And I think I've only ever had two bottles that are off. And obviously, if it tastes like vinegar, it's off. If it smells like rubber bands, it's off. And if you can't tell by sniffing it, it ain't off. So that's the golden rule. So if you want to be a wine expert with only one sign when they give you the wine to taste, I mean, I don't know the last time. I think maybe in the last 20 years, I've only ever had one bottle within a restaurant, which I've gone bloody hell, what is that? And then you only have to go, oh, and he says, just give it to the wine. We just say, give us give that smell. And it'll go far and run away. So if you want to, if you want to appear to be a wine expert, just do this. When you open a bottle of wine, it gives it to you to taste. You don't taste it. You just go, if you can't smell it, it's not off. So you just smell it and go, that smells all right. Yeah, that's fine. And I go, this person knows about their wine. So anyway, you know, now, you know, just sniff it. Well, how's the sniff doing? Yeah, still, still nice. Still, it's more flowering now. This is, oh, this is this is how I like it. I like it. Wine archaeology. It's going a bit nutty now, a bit like me. Almonds, tastes like almonds. Someone's put cyanide in my wine. Not bitter almonds, it could be bitter almonds. Anyway, I'm running low. Sorry, chick, more wine? Sure. What's that you're eating? Dumas. Well, not the Three Musketeers. What are you reading? It's called Forty Five. Is it like it's an old record? Not that old. And this wine was probably about the same time, right? So anyway, I open a lot of really old bottles and that bottle opener you just saw is fabulous. Well, I would not open a bottle of wine without it. Not an old one, anyway. Not anything over, say, 30 years old. And that's pretty much all I drink. It's called the Durand. So here it is. And that is the Durand in its little box. And this goes inside that for storage. So it goes in like that. And that's how it stores. We don't do that to take the cork out. You just put this piece into the cork, first of all. And then you put the what do you call the butler's friend or whatever around the side of the cork and twist them together and pull them out like you saw. And it all goes in this nice little box with magnets. It's saved so much trouble and so many corks going in the bottle or breaking in half because you put your corkscrew in, you know, let's just say it's a 40 year old cork or 30 year old cork. And it's kind of weak all those years. So when you pull it out, you've got all the strain on the full length of the cork. And then it's less and less length of the cork. Less and less and less and less. And bang, it breaks as you're pulling it out. You have less and less of the cork to take the strain of the pull. That's why it breaks in half. So here you put the corkscrew in to fix the cork and then you put the butler's friends down the side and twist it out. Now, as I said before, if you just go, ah, butler's friends, you put the butler's friends in and it pushes the cork into the bottle because it's got no grip on the side of the bottle to hold it in there. So you need them both. Otherwise, you won't be able to get the cork out. I've just had some cheese delivered. Now this, is this the seven year old Rochefort? I've just heard my seven year old Rochefort has been thrown out as it was leaving the premises on its own. But anyway, I'm going to have some Rochefort with this beautiful wine and see how it goes. So let's see how this 140 year old wine stands up with some Rochefort. I think it's going to go well, but you never know till you know. So what I've got here is a piece of bread with some blue cheese called Blu de Cos, which is next door to Rochefort. And I'm going to see how it goes with the wine. First of all, let's pop some in. I can't say it lights it up. You know, a modern red wine, piece of blue cheese. Beautiful. But I think the 140 year old wine, which, by the way, Cantonac Brown, there's a few other Cantonacs, but it's from Bordeaux. In fact, I just visited the area to pick up some wine. You go down to Bordeaux, it's just everywhere. If you know anything about wine, you're basically tripping over all the famous names. I wouldn't say that Rochefort or near Rochefort works very well with this old wine. It's a little bit too old and fragile to do the tango. Meanwhile, Dumas was 40 years before this wine went in the bottle. So he's a bit earlier. So a nice ripe fig with a mouthful of this wine. Beautiful, beautiful. Let me try it with a strawberry now. It's a ripe strawberry. You know, so many times you eat strawberries, it softens the strawberry, but it doesn't bring out the flavor like it does with the fig. The fig is, yeah, the fig mixes with the wine, makes a nice mix. Very nice. But actually now I'm getting a bit of strawberry aftertaste with the wine. There's a heavier note. The wine gives it a heavier note, kind of ripe black cherry note. Very nice. We're getting through it as well. Oh, dear. A mixture of cheeses now. And Zoe's going to tell us what they are. So here we have old Gouda, Emmental, Sainte-Nicte, Tom from Brebis, and this is some Goetjes. Brebis being sheep. We're going to try to see how that tastes with the wine, because cheese and wine is always fine. So I'm going to try Gouda. Very Gouda. Putting a punch out of the cheese. That's good. I could definitely down a whole bottle with these cheeses. Hmm. Very good. It's goat hard cheese. Hmm. You get that goatee note. Note of goatee. Changes all the flavors. Just tastes like wood. I mean, wood tastes OK. I mean, you wouldn't go out of your way to chew a piece of wood, but that's what it tastes like. OK. Ancient wine and goat. Not necessarily best friends. So this is Sainte-Nicte, which is a sort of semi soft. Well, it's soft cheese. OK, so here we go. Pure Sainte-Nicte, no rind. I'm pulling it through my nose to get the flavor. Very milky. Oh, yeah. Can't really say I can taste the cheese. Can't really say I can taste the wine. I can taste the mix. It's sort of like a field of corn stubble. I mean, wheat stubble, I mean, not corn. That's a different thing. Yeah. Sort of hot, dusty. Outside flavor. Very nice. I like that. Oh, I like that a lot. You're drinking a whole bottle. We've got two. You can have the other one. There's no alcohol in it. Get a little bit buzzed, but, you know, two glasses of wine would do that. Newton, have you come to drink the wine? This is Newton, who was our kitten once, and he had a terrible accident, and we spent a fortune fixing his leg. And we had to take him to a special hospital for crazy operations on cats. And they fixed him up as a kitten. And they didn't have to chop his leg off or put him down. And now he runs around as bright as rain. Neutipus. Ah, Neutipus. So enough of these superstar cats. This is Tom, which is pretty hard. Not as hard as cheddar, but quite hard. And this is made out of sheep cheese. And it's sort of cheesy, but not strong. Sheep cheddar. Is there such a thing? But not as hard. I mean, the French have got thousands and thousands of different cheeses. UK's got like 25. And I'm not even allowed to kill Stilton's Stilton if it's made in Stilton. But anyway, the French, they just make lots of cheeses. And a wonderful thing. Make it more creamy, more complicated, more mysterious. You see, that's a beautiful thing with this wine. I've nearly drunk a bottle now, and I'm not too drunk. I'm a little bit that would probably come from a couple of glasses of wine normally, as opposed to five. So the thing is, it is an exploration. It's like a journey into the pyramids. This is this is from another world and you can taste it. Please don't try. Please don't go and start buying all this stuff. You push the prices up for me. I mean, there was a time when they were giving this stuff away and then suddenly it got popular and it went through the roof. And and now it's come back down again. Hey, we like that. There's so much less of it than there was. And I suppose when I started to drink this in the 1980s, the equivalent wine was so 1880 minus 40, right? So 1840, I suppose there wasn't that many bottles around of 1840. I did drink some from the 1850s, naughty me. But, you know, now I'm an old guy. The equivalent wine is is basically after the First World War. But anyway, it's a journey, not a bottle of wine. It's a time machine, not a bottle of wine. It's a experience, not a bottle of wine. So you can buy a bottle of Roman Acconte from five years ago. You can pay $10,000 for that. Sorry, $15,000 for that. And this I don't know what this was. I wasn't. It was three figures. And you can go on a journey. You're not just buying a luxury item that the Chinese want. You're finding a doorway into the past. That's how I look at it anyway. So another one, another one of these ancient cheeses. So here we have Emmental, you know, not an uncommon piece of cheese, basically rubber, rubber plus cheese. I won't knock it. You can't knock cheese like Ben Gunn. First question is cheese. Do you have any cheese? So anyway, let's have a go. So the nutty action going on again, nutty and, you know, Emmental is kind of slightly cheesy, but it's mainly a sort of texture event. And the wine takes over and uses it as like a platform for it. So if you have a butter on bread, the bread is the platform. The butter is what you taste. I mean, it could be the other way around. If you've got an incredibly tasty bread, the butter is the platform for the bread. But if you put honey on it or jam, bread is a platform, butter is another platform. And then the honey would be the, you know, the boom. So I've got to go back to this wine and see where we are. Very, very little smell now. Still cherries. In fact, I'm surprised because, well, mind you, when I've had other wines which have changed quite quickly, they may have been actually much more fragile than this because this may have been kept properly for quite a long time. I mean, it may be it went from a cellar where it'd been sat for 100 years, went to the auction house where it was sat, probably not so well for a year, six months, three months. Then it went to my friend who laid it down, didn't move it for two or three years. And then I lugged it through the Eurostar back to France. That was probably the most traumatic period for it and then laid it down. So maybe it didn't have an issue. Remember, I bought a Chateau Margaux which used to belong to the Doge and it had a bit of a history to it. And it had gone around the world about six times before I drunk it. And, you know, it was wrecked. It was completely wrecked. You could tell it was wrecked. But again, because this is, you know, a visit to the pyramids, you can go, oh, that's flavor. That's from the wrecked part of it. And all that flavor is from what it would have been like. So it's like examining an old painting. Maybe it's chipped. Maybe it's flaked. Maybe it needs restoring. But you're looking at what's underneath the damage. Now, this is not so damaged. It's old. It's fragile. It's changed many times, probably, you know, four times, five times even. And it's ended up as a really lovely ancient wine. I tell you, I'm relieved because I thought this was going to be vinegar when I poured it, but 140 years. That's old. So here we go. Getting down to the bottom now. And I think it's probably time to summarize because I'd like to finish this off and meditate on the delicious fragrances. So very happy that it wasn't off because I think it was on the very edge, which is why I opened it, because you saw that it was bleeding out the top of the foil. And that's, you know, time to drink it. I didn't want to drink it. I wanted to save it for my 100th birthday or something like that. But anyway, it was bleeding, probably going the way of the passenger pigeon. So I had to drink it. And I thought I'd bring you along to enjoy it with me. It's a very rare experience. And you'd enjoy it because I know you like history. Obviously, you wouldn't be on my channel in the first place. So this is a little secret for my subscribers on the Chill Bill channel. And it's a beautiful wine. It's a beautiful experience. Thank goodness it was not. And I'm surprised just how flavorsome it is and just how good the flavors are. And now I'm going to finish it off and hopefully by tomorrow when I'm ready to finish the rest of it off, it won't be gone because, you know, these wines, when they meet oxygen, they change a lot. So anyway, you learn about this thing and they're not paying me, by the way. But I swear by this gadget. So if you ever do get any old bottles or you want to get old bottles before you do get one of these, I got bloody expensive mind. You know, about 180 bucks or was when I bought it for five million bucks now. But they will absolutely get your corks out of a bottle. Doesn't matter what. And, you know, if you ever get the opportunity to go and do a little bit of wine archaeology, I would I would say do it as long as you're not expecting to get a five year old wine. You'll be in great shape. It is a journey. And I'm glad I could take you on it. And I hope you liked it. And thank you very much for being still here after all this time where I haven't been posting and with a bit of luck. I'll see you again soon. Bye now. Well, it's wine o'clock and it's tomorrow. If you know what I mean. Yesterday I opened it and this is a second carafe. And I thought this probably wouldn't make it. But I can tell you it's even more cherry now. Totally cherries. So anyway, I just want to know. There's no time like wine o'clock. Thanks very much for watching. Please subscribe and like I try to do another video for you in not too much of the distant future. And thanks for coming back to see me.