1y ago

This 2000-Year-Old Wine Is Still Pourable. But You Don’t Want to Drink It

www.scientificamerican.com

This 2,000-Year-Old Wine Is Still Pourable, but You Don’t Want to Drink It

33 comments

I was in the drink it camp right up until
the experts found bone remains and a gold ring at the bottom of the glass vessel.
It must have been a bone dry white wine though
- Ah, so a full bodied wine.
- Ah yes, a Soylent White Cabernet.
- I've had homemade distilled rice wine before that had tobacco leaves, a starfish, and a lizard in the bottle. It was actually really good.
- The original Sourtoe Cocktail
- That just adds character and flavor. 🥂
- Pfffflt, weak
- Ew, did Beetlejuice put his engagement ring complete with severed finger in someone's wine glass?
"pourable" is used to describe wine about as often as "theoretically non-toxic"
- My town has one of the oldest underground wine cellars in Europe with some bottles up to 300 years old. I talked to somebody maintaining the wine cellar and part of the cork replacement procedure that happens about every 50 years is to taste the wine - just a drop though. Apparently it's pretty awful. His colleague said "You have to taste your way up to one of these!" which sounds like bullshit to me. I bet it doesn't get better after 1700 more years.
  
  The real problem is once you get a taste for it, only 1,000 year old bottles will do.
  
  taste your way up
  More like taste your way down
Don't tell me what I do or do not want to do.
How is it even a wine at this point? Doesn't it naturally become vinegar after long enough?
- When it oxidizes yes iirc. No or ultra low oxygen content means that process is greatly delayed.
  
  Oxidization is not the process that turns wine into vinegar, it is a secondary fermentation by bacteria that does it.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_vinegar
Looks like a rusted skateboard bearing.
The liquid is still liquid.
I save & use all my vinegars (some for drinks!)

33 comments