Five years ago, Radio Hessen rated the longest-preserved and edible food in the world. The fifth to second place are: pickles in 1928, whiskey in 1886, asparagus in 1820, 1780 Champagne of the year.
They are all edible, but it is said that the taste of pickled cucumbers is different from what we are used to today. We don’t feel delicious to eat. Asparagus itself can be eaten, but since it is stored in a canned box made of lead, it is best not to touch it. There is no problem with the whiskey preserved in ice and the champagne salvaged from the deep sea.
The first place is also wine, a white wine made in 1540.
The wine was obtained by Simon, a wine merchant in Wiesbaden, from the wine auction of the cellar of King Ludwig II of Bayern. The situation in Germany was chaotic during World War II, so in 1937 he took the bottle of wine to London and kept it at another wine merchant. Unfortunately, the wine merchant’s shop was bombed during World War II. So Simon thought his wine must have ceased to exist. In 1978, he accidentally discovered his 1540 collection from the office of the cousin of the wine merchant. Because the small cabinet where the wine was placed had his address written on it, he took back the bottle of wine without much effort.
The grapes used to make this bottle of wine are collected from a famous grape hill in Wurzburg, Germany, where the slope of the hill is large, the sunshine time is long, and because the grape hill is facing the Main River, the vineyard is moistened by the moisture brought by the river at night. The heating is flowing. According to the records of wine growers, the summer of 1540 was so hot that grape picking began in August. The right time and place made this bottle of wine.
Old wines are usually bought at auctions. But this bottle of the world’s oldest wine is already a priceless treasure. In 1996, the wine was lent to the citizen wine cellar of Würzburg for a long time as an exhibit and placed in the treasure house of the underground wine cellar. Simon chose the Civic Wine Cellar because the Civic Wine Cellar had its own vineyard in this famous grape hill before 1540, and it has a long history and tradition of winemaking. So he and his family decided to send the wine back to the production area in Germany, hoping to bring happiness to the wine lovers who visited the wine cellar. Also brought back to Germany with an empty bottle of 1540 vintage, two bottles of 1822 and one bottle of 1857.
So we went to the citizen’s wine cellar for pilgrimage, entered the underground of the wine cellar, walked around like a maze, and finally came to this treasure box. Behind the bulletproof glass, the dark green wine bottle was covered with a thick layer of gray, showing the unusual ages and stories it experienced.
What will the wine of 1540 taste like? In 1961, at a rare wine tasting party, a famous British wine connoisseur and writer Johnson participated in the tasting. He was fortunate enough to drink two sips and said that this wine is alive and a living organism. It is precisely because people drank the 1540 bottle of wine in 1961, so this bottle now kept in the citizen’s cellar becomes the only bottle of wine with the oldest age.
