Bidding for the Revolutionary War-era bottle starts at $20,000!

If your liquor cabinet is growing stale (and you have a few grand to burn!) Skinner Auctioneers has just the thing for you. A bottle of whiskey once owned by J. P. Morgan and believed to be the oldest known is heading to auction this summer. The valuable acquisition is included as part of a rare spirits showcase that begins in June and the price tag is quite hefty—$20,000 minimum, with the possibility of $40,000.

The spirit called The Old Indeglew Whiskey was appraised by fine spirits specialist Joseph Hyman and experts from the University of Georgia and University of Glasgow. Using the process of Carbon 14 dating to determine its age, they found the whiskey was bottled sometime between 1763 to 1803, which falls in the purview of the Revolutionary War. That feels like ancient history, doesn't it? Even crazier is the fact that the whiskey itself was concocted even earlier than that, as it aged in oak barrels before being bottled decades later.

So where did the bottle come from, and how did it end up on auction? Let's just say the hands it's passed through tell a story all their own. According to Barron, it was consigned by a South Carolina man, whose family has maintained ownership of it for over 65 years. The spirits' lineage goes all the way back to financier John Pierpont Morgan, or J. P. Morgan as he's famously known, who bought it at a Georgia grocery store called Evans & Ragland. From there, the bottle was passed down to Morgan's son and eventually former South Carolina Governor James Byrnes. Byrnes was also on the Supreme Court and served multiple presidents, including FDR and Harry Truman.

To say this bottle is like owning a piece of history is a serious understatement, to say the least! If you have a bee in your bonnet for a rare whiskey, the auction runs from June 22 to June 30 on their website. All we know is whoever makes the splurge will not want to waste a single drop!

What do you think of the world's oldest whiskey bottle? Sound off in the comments.

Brianna Persons
Brianna is an Oregon native who made her home in the DMV over two years ago. She loves scouting out new restaurants and drooling over Van Gogh’s landscapes in the National Gallery’s East Building. When she isn’t writing for Our Community Now, she’s tackling short fiction and working her baking magic in the kitchen. She resides in Maryland with her husband Nick and their black cat Sable.
RELATED ARTICLES
Ad Here