Antique Bottle is a Taste of History
When an excavation turns up an intact liquor bottle, archaeologists and distillers come together to uncork its secrets.
An intact antique bottle is an exciting discovery, whether it’s on a bottle collectors’ dig or an archaeological excavation. Last summer, an archaeological dig in Alta, Utah, turned up a corked bottle that still contained liquid. In addition to the rarity of the discovery, the bottle and its contents can provide new insight into life in an Old West mining town.
The bottle is estimated to be about 150 years old, dating to between 1870 and 1890. Alta was founded in the late 1860s for silver mining and grew into the 1870s, but natural disasters, including storms, avalanches, and fires, and the devaluation of silver left it a ghost town in the 1880s. Today, Alta is known for the Alta Ski Area, which opened in 1938. The excavation began as part of construction oversight for the ski area's water reservoirs.
According to Ian Wright, Utah’s Public Archaeologist and leader of the excavation, this is the only intact bottle of alcohol discovered by an archaeological dig in Utah. The cork was slightly damaged, allowing a faint alcohol smell to escape. Wright first contacted the Metropolitan Museum of Art for advice on conservation, then took the bottle to a local expert on aged spirits: High West Distillery in Park City, Utah.
The team at High West Distillery used a Coravin device, borrowed from nearby Old Town Cellars, to extract some of the bottle’s contents without removing the cork. Isaac Winter, director of distilling, tasted a sample and said it “wasn’t bad.” He told Utah news station Fox 13 that “It’s fruity, there’s a little bit of leather, there’s quite a bit of age on it.”
Samples of the liquid from the bottle will be sent to chemical labs for further analysis. High West hopes to recreate the drink, providing a tangible (literally, tastable!) connection to the region’s past.
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