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The oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world

Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wikimedia Commons It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervillain, offers his distinguished guest a bottle of wine, his finest, an ancient vintage from one of the most venerable vineyards.

It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervil­lain, offers his dis­tin­guished guest a bot­tle of wine, his finest, an ancient vin­tage from one of the most ven­er­a­ble vine­yards. We might fol­low the motif back at least to Edgar Allan Poe, whose “Cask of Amon­til­la­do” puts an espe­cial­ly devi­ous spin on the trea­sured bottle’s sin­is­ter con­no­ta­tions. A 1.5 liter “glass ves­sel with ampho­ra-like stur­dy shoul­ders” in the shape of dol­phins, the bot­tle is of no use to its own­er, but no one is cer­tain what would hap­pen to the liq­uid if it were exposed to air, so it stays sealed, its thick stop­per of wax and olive oil main­tain­ing an impres­sive­ly her­met­ic envi­ron­ment.

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