On December 12, 2012, the brand folks at Tanqueray decided to celebrate the unusual date
(and Frank Sinatra’s birthday) in an unusual manner — by cracking open a 40-something
bottle of Tanqueray. The event took place at the unassuming Mulberry Street Bar in New
York’s Little Italy, and gave a lucky few the chance to sip martinis and gimlets made with
the sort of stash that generally gets tossed when your grandfather moves into the nursing
home.”The 1960s were a great time for drinking, before the privations of the
’70’s and ’80s,” Tanqueray global brand ambassador Angus Winchester told the small,
thirsty crowd. While Sinatra loved his Gordon’s Gin and various blended Scotch whiskies,
he was also known to opt for Tanqueray on occasion. In fact, Old Blue Eyes had thrown back
a few drinks at the very bar where we were getting sloshed.Winchester brought
out a number of precision instruments from the ’60s, including a “martini scale,” used for
crafting the perfect drink (in this case, the American Standard Dry Martini with a 4:1
ratio of gin to vermouth). He then hoisted the old-timey Tanq and started pouring. “Making
a martini is not just a ritual, but a way of life.”The gin — which dates to
somewhere between 1966 and 1970, based on the labeling — was provided by a collector. It
had mellowed and softened with age. Winchester and his team also uncovered a ’60s-era
bottle of Noilly Prat dry vermouth to go with, but it hadn’t withstood the test of time,
being now hollow, oily and slightly vinegared. “We would love to think everything gets
better in the bottle,” says Winchester. “But that’s not the case. In the gin, the
coriander and some of the other botanicals have mellowed. But the juniper is still bright,
front and center.”Quaffing antique booze stashes has become a “thing” of late.
In 2010, divers from Sweden and Finland found intact Champagne bottles in a 230-year-old
shipwreck below the surface of the Baltic Sea. Naturally, they popped a bottle (valued at
around $80,000) and found it to be “a very sweet Champagne” with notes of tobacco and oak.
South Pole explorer Ernest
Shackleton left behind, it turned out, three crates of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland
Malt whisky, under the floorboards of his team’s Antarctic base camp hut. Excavated over
100 years later, Scotch whisky master blender Richard “The Nose” Paterson went about
sampling it (both through chemical analyses and good old-fashioned sniffing), “after
making damned sure the seals were intact.” The result: a new blend Paterson says is
identical. For $175 or so, you can taste a recreation of the Mackinlay’s Rare Old.
Paterson suggests you close your eyes, take a sip and imagine brutally cold winds and
penguins.”The allure of an intact antique liquor sample lies in the fact it
can provide a clear snapshot into an earlier time,” says Ted Breaux, whose research into
vintage, pre-ban absinthes from the early 20th century helped create the modern brand
Lucid, and make the whole absinthe category legal again. “Certain spirits, like absinthe
and Chartreuse, continue to age in the bottle. What we’re tasting today is a little
different than what it was a century ago.” Besides Lucid, Breaux has created several
absinthes through his company, Jade Liqueurs, including the elegant Nouvelle Orleans. More
recently, he has set about duplicating some of the dozen originals in his collection, and
has produced three reverse-engineered recreations, including a reproduction of the 1890s
original Edouard Pernod, a 1901 Absinthe Superieure and a C.F. Berger original Swiss
absinthe recipe.Bars are also getting in on the vintage spirits act, and not
only with whisky and cognac. Pouring Ribbons, a new bar in New York’s East Village, boasts
an entire page of vintage Chartreuse bottles (both yellow and green) dating back to the
1950s. A single ounce of the strong, funky liqueur can set you back as much as $125.
Salvatore Calabrese, a noted London bartender and co-owner of the bar at the Playboy Club
London, has made a specialty of crafting cocktails from old booze. He made the news at the
beginning of 2012, when a patron accidentally broke a 224-year-old bottle of cognac
worth about $77,000.
If you’re interested in learning more about antiques in general but more specifically antique furniture, check out this blog on antique furniture. My friend told me they understand the market fantastically well.