On the label eaten away by centuries, we can only distinguish the last two letters of cognac. The extremely rare Maison Gautier bottle from 1762 was sold on Thursday for more than 118,000 pounds by Sotheby’s, a record in this area, the auction house announced.
It’s an Asian private collector who won the precious bet for exactly 118,580 pounds (131,900 euros), specifies the press release.
#AuctionUpdate A bottle of Gautier Cognac 1762 – one of the world’s oldest surviving cognacs and the oldest vintage Cognac ever to be sold at auction – sells for £ 118,580. pic.twitter.com/9bbEc42qu3
– Sotheby’s (@Sothebys) May 28, 2020
Called ” Big Brother “, this is one of the last three bottles of Gautier cognac from 1762 still in existence today, and the largest. They have been in the same family for generations since the end of the 19th century, according to Sotheby’s. They had been left with the seller’s great grandparents by an orphan, Alphonse, whom they had taken in with them.
Still drinkable?
Alphonse had left his adoptive family in the 1870s to work in the Cognac region. He returned home a decade later with a load of bottles of this brandy, allegedly given to him as wages after the destruction of much of the vineyard by the phylloxera insect. Among them, the three Gautier bottles, with labels in perfect condition.
Having gone to war in 1914, Alphonse never returned. As the ” Big Brother “, the ” Little brother “ had been sold at auction in New York in 2014, while the ” Little sister “ is kept at the Gautier Museum, in the southwest of France.
“She should still be able to drink herself”, had commented, before the sale of the bottle Thursday, Jonny Fowle, specialist in spirits at Sotheby’s, in the newspaper The Times.
High alcohol drinks “Keep very well”, he added, without excluding a “Old bottle effect”, which develops “Sometimes very pleasant tropical notes, and sometimes less attractive notes compared to porridge”.
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