Do you have "the last bottle"?

[David M. Bueker]

JuliaB posted a request for a tasting note on a 1999 Siduri Pinot Noir, and I did a little searching only to come up with notes from 2000 and 2001. It turns out that there are 10 bottles of this wine still held by CellarTracker users, and while that's in no way a comprehensive sampling of the world's cellars, it does indicate that there may not be much of this wine left floating around.

Certainly there are extremely rare wines (e.g. Bordeaux from the 1800s) and wines that should be rare but keep turning up at auction (e.g. '45 Mouton & '47 Cheval Blanc - I mean how much can be left), but how about us poor schlubs. What have we got in our cellars of normal commercial releases that is by now getting pretty scarce, maybe even the last bottle on Earth.

I took a very quick look, and I am the only person on CellarTracker with a bottle of 1975 J. J. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese. I'm sure there's others out there.

So do you have something that was commercially released, some limited bottling that might be going the way of the Dodo? Let's hear it.

As far as I know, I opened the last bottle of Joseph Swan "Angelo's Old Vine" white, 1999, in January 2008. I know '99 was the last vintage. Rod bottled 54 cases.

It was great.
Angelo's Old Vine: Beautiful pale lemon color. Aroma of melon with some faint mustiness - my sister-in-law Pam said it was "good musty, like Grandma's attic". Rather thick, slow legs on swirling. Swirling did open the aroma a lot. On entry, flowers and melon. Mid-palate, an oily feel much like a mature Riesling, very smooth. The faintest traces of the oak in which it was matured. With the ahi tartare, I didn't get the lemon I had expected; with the foie gras, the lemon appeared in the background. A beautiful, long, nearly sweet finish, fading gracefully away. The sommelier at the Plumed Horse in Saratoga was fascinated with it - he said "Like chardonnay, but it isn't" and suggested several French whites, dubiously. I'm glad I chose to drink it up. It was time.

John

A friend of mine was the sales rep (for a time) for Cedar Mountain, a boutique winery in Livermore. I still have several of the bottles she gave me from the '94 and '95 vintages (as they were very tannic and forbidding in their youth, I've been in no rush). CT shows no hint that anyone else owns their wines, unlikely as that seems. I also have a bottle of "Always Elvis" NV Frontenac Blanc D'Oro from Frontenac Vineyards of Italy (bottled ca. 1978) showing a picture of the King in a tasteful black and gold label design, kindly purchased for me at a local estate sale by one of my thoughtful colleagues. I would hope that I own the last bottle of this stuff. I plan on opening it when an "orange wine" event appears in my area.

Mark Lipton

Nope, everything pre-1990 is gone.

The oldest we have is an: 1995 Pacenti Primo-Ripaccioli P. Luigi, Brunello Di Montalcino.

I also have a bottle of "Always Elvis" NV Frontenac Blanc D'Oro from Frontenac Vineyards of Italy (bottled ca. 1978) showing a picture of the King in a tasteful black and gold label design, kindly purchased for me at a local estate sale by one of my thoughtful colleagues. I would hope that I own the last bottle of this stuff. I plan on opening it when an "orange wine" event appears in my area.

Now you've ruined the blind tasting fun!

It's conceivable that I have the last bottle of 1916 Rieussec on the planet. It was an extremely rare wine to begin with, and aside from the bottle found in the stache of that brewery in Scotland, there aren't any reference to any other bottles anywhere on the internet Broadbent doesn't even have a tasting note.

Not sure if mine is the last bottle as there may be some in museums, but I do have a bottle of Billecart-Salmon Brut Champagne, a n.v. Champagne released in splits especially for the inaugural flight of Pan-Am's China Clipper flight from San Francisco to Manilla on 21 Oct 1936. The bottle remains unopened and fully intact although ullage cannot be determined because of the long gold foil capsule.

I found the bottle in the flea market (shuk ha pishpesheem) of Jaffa in Israel and paid for it the magnificent sum of NIS 10 (about US$ 2.50). The bottle will not be opened. Nor is it in my cellar, sitting instead on a small shelf above my desk. I have been offered a most generous sum for the bottle but over my desk it shall remain.



Best
Rogov

[David M. Bueker]

Speacial bottlings are a more likely case for this "last bottle" phenomenon. I have a bottle of 1982 Alain Robert Champagne that is specially "capped" (the little plaque on top of the cork) for a visit of the pope to Reims. I wonder how many of those are still lurking around.

I have a `88 Matsvani from Vaseaux Cellars, Okanagan. This varietal used to be planted in Georgia. Have just pulled the bottle out, looks quite brown, yikes!!!!
Betcha no-one else has this one? Back label says"will develope will aging".

I took a very quick look, and I am the only person on CellarTracker with a bottle of 1975 J. J. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese.

we ought to get together, I seem to have the only bottle of this:

1976 Karl Beucher Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese (relative of yours...?)

for 1975 Prum, I have: 1975 S.A. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese Eiswein

cheers!

To paraphrase Mike Steinberger: "Wine is a beverage, not a trophy."

To paraphrase Mike Steinberger: "Wine is a beverage, not a trophy."

Dave
A good sanity check for us - I hadn't posted as I feel slightly uncomfortable with this kind of thread, but didn't feel like I should raise this spectre. Now you have, I'll empathise with your concerns, but also add my own candidates in that context.

Of all the wine forums I've encountered, this is perhaps the least into it's (please excuse the following phrase) 'Willy waving', that I can think of. Thus I don't see the poster's here as getting into the "look what I've got" mentality that can crop up elsewhere. It's something I like about how folks here are.

Your sanity check is a good reminder though.

... anyway I have two candidates
2 bottles of commemorative bottles of white wine (undoubtedly plonk) for a couple of cricket games I played in (early 1990s). Both fine days out and the bottles are buried in a case, never to be opened. The sensible folk will have opened and drunk them that year, so maybe of what must have been ~ 25 bottles of each in total, I may well have the last bottle!

regards

Ian

Interesting, it didn't occur to me that having the 'only' bottle of something that is far one side of some incredible Bordeaux or Burgundy was bragging (I admit being perhaps naive...).

Anyhow, the 2 Mosels I am privileged to have were both gifts from myself to my way-too-early-departed parents, and have had some suspect storage. I mostly hope that when they are opened they will bring some enjoyment.

[David M. Bueker]

I don't look at this as any kind of trophy issue. Heck that '75 Prum that I still have is actually promised to someone for their anniversary ('75 wedding).

It's a case of sooner or later an individual wine is nearly gone from the face of the earth - somebody has to have the last bottle. Curiosity - not trophy hunting.

Ditto what David said. I never considered this a "trophy" issue. If I drop dead tomorrow, I certainly hope they don't etch my tombstone with: And she had the last remaining bottle of Siduri '99.


Jb

Yeah, my trophies wouldn't include 2001 Chateau Burbank chard, 1997 Laffourcade Sav, 2000 CRB Cot, etc. In any case, I'm sure that just because they're only ones listed on CT doesn't mean they're only extant bottles (lots of the Cot was sold at CSW!).

I quite like the fact that most of the wines in my cellar (aside from a couple of gifts from very generous friends and two bottles of Wendouree) are nowhere near the last - and a good number are still out on the market. I don't keep a particularly big cellar and while it's nice to not have too many bottles with my tastes regularly changing/preferences developing for certain producers, I like being able to just reload on certain wines that I really like.

Would much rather have a great experience and say 'Damn, I wish I had more of this' for a bottle of Jakoby-Mathy GK Spatlese or an AJ Adam that I can buy a bunch more of at Table&Vine (or other places with more effort) than a bottle that's gone off the market a long time back and would take some serious effort to find more of - if any even exists. And yeah, no 'last' bottles in my cellar for sure.

Yeah, my trophies wouldn't include 2001 Chateau Burbank chard.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I could find someone else with that particular wine...

Mark Lipton

Certainly there are extremely rare wines (e.g. Bordeaux from the 1800s) and wines that should be rare but keep turning up at auction (e.g. '45 Mouton & '47 Cheval Blanc - I mean how much can be left)...

I always thought that old stellar vintage Bordeaux could be produced on demand, like Johhny Rotten/Lydon singing about 'unlimmmmited suppppply'.

Of course, Cellartracker is not the be-all, end-all source to go scouring the earth for unseen bottles, so I am sure there are many more old wines floating about that never see the light of day. I'd say that boutique California wines, and tiny Italian/Rhone/etc. producers have a hold on what is the 'final bottle' out there. As for myself, there cannot be too many Carlisle 2002 petite sirah's around.

I think I might well have one of the last bottles of 1971 Adam Albert Hattenheimer Wisselbrunnen Beerenauslese.

-Paul W.

Yes, fair comment that cellartracker still only represents a fraction of the bottles in circulation. Wine-searcher is another easy to search internet resource. Finally it's pretty common for wineries to hold 'library stock' of most vintages, though over time they will reduce the numbers. An ITB friend has the proud distinction of selling two bottles of Petrus back to the Chateau, as they were missing those vintages and he had them in stock.

regards

Ian

Hah.....one of my assistants on a mission of "organizing and cleaning" the cellar came to me about an hour ago with a bottle of George DuBoeuf's 1994 Nouveau Beaujolais. At one stage or another the bottle was placed on a rack, tucked in with (don't ask my why or how) a mixed case of 1994 Ribera del Duero reds.

A 1994 Nouveau.......challenging. It will be opened within the next few days to see just where "it is at".

Best
Rogov

I have a few that I'd rather not post in a public forum but one odd bottle that I have is 1945 Beaulieu Pinot Noir (yes, Pinot Noir).