These were in a closet at my brothers house, I found them after he passed away. They were stored on their side and in the dark. I don’t drink, and have no clue what to do with these. Thoughts? Insights? Would appreciate any input! Thanks!!
by Natural_Ad3054
8 Comments
Holy hell
Definitely worth some money, but not as much as if they were stored properly. Try googling “chateau haut-brion”
Very nice bottles and valuable. One of the first growths of Bordeaux. Big French red wine.
Provenance and storage makes all the difference, that being said, you say they were stored on their side in a dark closet, I am sure a collector would be willing to take the risk on them for the right price.
Haut-Brion..one of the greatest wineries in the world. 1976 and 1979 were not stellar vintages in Bordeaux, but with a producer of this caliber they might still be incredible. Looks like good fill levels too, seemingly properly stored. Unfortunately, not much you can do to sell them, especially since they were stored in a closet and not a cool cellar. If you really don’t drink at all- do you have friends who drink and more importantly, any friends who you know are very passionate about wine?
If it were me and I found these: 1. Store them upright for a while to get the sediment to the bottom. 2. Purchase an inexpensive ah-so opener from Amazon and practice using it on younger bottles (With wines this old, the corks can easily crumble if you use a conventional wine opener.) 3. Carefully and slowly pour into a decanter and leave the last couple of ounces so that the sediment stays in the bottle. 4. Have a few really good friends over and try to finish the wines within a fairly short time span, given that they’ve already received a lot of air via the natural aging process. 5. Understand that aging wine is very far from an exact science and even with an incredible winery like this, they could easily have lost their beauty.
These are from a very famous producer, and yet both are from rather challenging vintages. If you can prove that they have been stored at a fairly cool temperature, a wine geek would be more than happy to take them off your hands—though you won’t get as much money as people would pay if shopping at a trusted source with provenance—since you really can’t guarantee how these have been stored for the life of the wine. I for one would be very curious to open these, but wouldn’t hold my breath that they will show perfectly.
Have you put the words on the labels into, for example, google?
(Real input is – contact an auction house that does wine. They will know how to deal with these, legally. They won’t fetch a huge amount, but enough to be worth the effort for most. These are the sort of bottles that can get sold even when storage wasn’t perfect and also as solo lots rather than cases.)
1979 too old, not a big domaine, I can give you 30$ for both bottles PayPal, lmk
I googled. I’m a nerd and sifted through a ton of results and my head hurt. Some say the 79 is a very good year, some say it was bad. Some say they are worth over $1000 and $800, but no info on what that wine would look like and how it would been stored.
Figured I’d ask here and get answers from some people who know what they are talking about. And not be so overwhelmed.