The wines are delight, culture and enjoyment because it explains stories that transpose us to times that today are just remember. That’s why, because we like the wine and the stories that hide behind it, from Grau Online, your online wine shop for a moment we want to leave aside our condition as a wine and liquor store to invite you to know the oldest wines from the world at our hand, from the hand of those who direct your favorite place on the net to buy drinks online.
The wine that tasted Lecrerc
In 1944, and after liberating the city of Strasbourg from the Nazis, General Phillippe Lecrerc was invited to taste a special white wine like few. It was considered the oldest wine in the world and can still be tasted. According to its conservatives,- it is in the “Cave Historique des Hospices Civils” of that Alsatian city-, dates from the year 1472. They keep it in a 300-liter egg-shaped barrel that was released in 2015. Before, and for four months, had been preserved in a stainless steel tube that served as temporary relief to the old barrel – also in the shape of an egg – that kept the wine from 1718 until 2014. They changed it because the old eighteenth-century vat presented cracks that caused losses of up to three liters per year of the valuable broth. Before General Lecrerc’s displeasure, the wine had been tasted twice more: one in 1576 and the signing of a cooperation agreement between the cities Strasbourg and Zurich, and another in 1718, just after laying the foundation stone of the Hospital Civil of Strasbourg. It is a dry white wine that currently reaches 9’4º, retains aromas of wood and vanilla and has a pH of 2.21 which makes it as acidic as vinegar. Each year 1% of the contents of the barrel is evaporated by evaporation, but conservatives replace evaporated with dry white.
Pedro Ximénez from before “La Gloriosa”
In 1868 Isabel II left Spain after the revolution called “Gloriosa” and it is certain that many of those who participated in that episode celebrated it or drowned sorrows – by that time, and as now, Spain was a country in the opposite political sensibilities coexisted – with a glass of good Jerez. Perhaps they did it with the Pedro Ximénez “Gran Orden 1860”, a sweet wine of 18º whose “Solera” was created just eight years before the September Revolution by Jose Garvey, since already at that time was commercialized. The wine in question has come to this day thanks to the particular system of harvest and vintage, a genius of oenological art that consists of storing the wine in vats placed in three heights from which from time to time a percentage of its content is removed to fill others. Of those located close to the ground – from that of vintage – is periodically extracted a quarter of the content for consumption and what is missing is filled with wine from the central row or first harvest. The barrels of this row are filled with wine from the upper row, which is filled with new wine. Thanks to this system, wines like the Gran Orden 1860 still come to our tables and we can taste it, as the parents of our great-great grandparents did.
From Alicante to Girona through the sea floor
“Fondillón” in the province of Alicante is a living monument. It is obtained by overmating the classic “monastrell” grape from the area and is made, like the sweet wines of Jerez, with harvest and vintage, but the defenders of the Levantine wine explain that nothing has to envy its Andalusian peers. Today, Fondillón is sold by wineries such as “Bocopa”, “Primitivo Quiles”, “Las Virtudes”, “Culebrón”,” Santa Catalina”, “Vinos Algueña” or “Bodegas Alejandro”; but the oldest “Fondillón” that have news was exposed in Girona in 2014. It is an original bottle of 1813 located in the wreck of an English ship that sank off the Delta del Ebro. The remains were located in 2008 by fishermen of the area and everything recovered – including the bottle of “Fondillón”, which was supposed to be part of the private winery of the captain of the sunken ship – was exhibited in Girona within the sample Deltebre I: The History of a Shipwreck. The bottle is supposed to have been acquired in Alicante, where the ship stopped before sinking in Tarragona. The experts who have analyzed the wine concluded that it was a “Fondillón”, wine very much like the British naval officer of the time.
Jerez and malvasía of XIX
From the “Marco de Jerez” comes “Maestro Sierra 1830”, an amontillado wine that is elaborated with system of “criaderas y soleras” from 1830 with palomino must. The special thing about “Maestro Sierra 1830” is that it is made using 2,000 liters barrels instead of 500, which allows a special oxidation that makes this wine unique. But since everything is not in Jerez, the lover of the old wines must also travel to the wineries “El Grifo”, which have been operating since 1775 in Lanzarote and have preserved three barrels of 800 liters full of sweet mahogany “malvasía” original from 1881 which, although not is marketed, comes out of the cellar in small bottles – the barrels are filled according to a system similar to that of “criaderas y soleras”- of which a chosen few can enjoy.
The oldest bottle in the world
However, the wine that is supposed to be the oldest in the world is not one of the previous ones, since in Speyer (Germany) a white glass bottle sealed with wax of 1,650 years that is located in the tomb of a noble roman. It contains a white liquid – vinegar probably already – which is suspected to be already poisonous. It was analyzed by chemists of the II Reich during the First World War.
Image Source: Fickr
Related Articles:
-The best wine magazines on paper and on the Net
-The Top 5 hotels with cellar in Spain