Famous 130-year-old wine, hidden by suspected Nazi sympathizers, uncovered decades later under castle

8 bottles of the famous French wine that survived World War II and decades of communist rule hidden under a Czech castle have been lovingly restored by the chateau that produced them some 130 years ago.

Bottles of Chateau d’Yquem – one of the most expensive, prized white wines in the world – are part of a collection of 136 bottles found in the western Czech castle of Becov nad Teplou in the 1980s, which are scheduled to go on display in the future.

The collection once belonged to the noble Beaufort-Spontin family, who left the old Czechoslovakia in a hurry at the end of the war when they were suspected of collaborating with the Nazis.

The wine spent decades hidden under the floorboards of a palatial church next to the iconic St. Maurus – said to hold the bones of St. John the Baptist – before the communist secret police discovered them decades later.

But while the shrine was taken to Prague at one point for reconstruction before returning to Becov for display in 2002, the wine was left where it was.

In 1984, the family asked an American businessman, Danny Douglas, to secretly return the hidden wine, Reuters reported. During the warrant process, the police realized what Douglas was looking for, which led to the eventual discovery of the collection.

Ten years ago, the wine was found and the difficult rescue work began.

Chateau d’Yquem, from the Sauternes area of ​​Bordeaux, leads the way, taking care of their eight wines, made in 1892 and 1896.

“We tasted a very small amount to make sure that, in terms of aromas and in terms of balance on the palate and the overall impression, the wine corresponds to a Chateau d’Yquem of that age,” said cellar master Toni El Khawand.

Laboratory tests proved that the wine was genuine Chateau d’Yquem, and the winery could take the corks and put in the original bottles and capsules to protect them.

As the wine slowly absorbed oxygen, the winery had to re-bottle it, returning only five of the original bottles to Becov as a result.

Speaking at the launch of the prepared bottles, El Khawand said tasting the wine, which is still heavy from the excess sugar, is “a miracle.”

“What we’re really doing when we open it is revealing a time capsule. We’re removing this cork that seals the liquid in its place, and in a way, the passage of time,” he told AFP.

“Liquid memory”

“The wine impressed us with its freshness on the palate,” he said. “It’s so fresh, almost acid fresh.”

Enjoying the wine’s “great complexity”, El Khawand singled out cedar, dried fruit, saffron, cinnamon and nutmeg aromas in the wine, combined with “the most typical aromas of Chateau d’Yquem in these years: notes of chocolate, coffee, mocha, aromas of oud.”

Yquem’s latest products sell for hundreds of dollars a bottle, and the Czech National Heritage Institute has valued the entire collection at around $5 million at auction.

But El Khawand declined to give a financial estimate.

“First of all, it has moral and historical significance,” he said.

“It’s a memory, in the end – a liquid memory, to be sure – but it’s a memory of all who came before us, for the work done,” added El Khawand.

An auction is not currently on the cards – instead, Becov plans to display all the bottles in the collection containing wine and cognac, including Pedro Ximenez’s 1899 sherry and 1892 port.

The palace has started a fundraising campaign for this new exhibition.

“When we raise money, we will want to examine the wines,” says Katerina Nyvltova, Becov’s collections manager.

“And if we can’t fix something else, we will fight for it,” he told AFP.

The unveiling of the wine comes days after the Georgian government unveiled a batch of 20,000 rare bottles of wine, some linked to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.