A stash of late 19th Century wines, including bottles of Château d’Yquem, has been discovered underneath a chapel floor in the Czech Republic. The treasure is thought to have been hidden before its “Nazi collaborator” owners fled the region during the war.
Bečov Castle in the Czech Republic provided the backdrop to an extraordinary find of rare wines from the 1800s following a 42-year-long plight to resurrect the bottles, led by the family who hid them.
The stash of 133 wines — which includes eight bottles of Château d’Yquem, as well as an 1899 Pedro Ximenez Sherry, an 1892 Port and unspecified Cognac — was retrieved from underneath the floor of a chapel inside Bečov Castle, where they had slept for decades. On discovering that some of its own wines were among the precious haul, Y’quem stepped in and offered to restore the bottles to some of their former glory.
“Perfect conditions”
According to Château d’Yquem cellar master Toni El Khawand, the wines had inadvertently been kept in “perfect conditions” underneath the chapel floor.
The collection “benefitted from very good conditions of conservation in this old chapel. I think very humid and very cold, with thick walls, and also underground so it preserved the moisture and temperature in a very constant way,” El Khawand said.
“Those were excellent conditions to store a wine.”
Explaining that the vintages of d’Yquem found among the hidden stash were 1892 and 1896, El Khawand added: “We tasted a very small quantity to be sure that, aromatically and in terms of balance on the palate and overall perception, the wine corresponded to a Château d’Yquem of that age”.
The winery then set about replacing the corks and fitting the original bottles with capsules to protect them, with only five full original bottles of Y’quem surviving the process.
Time capsule
After tasting the wine, El Khawand said it had likely survived due to its high sugar content (d’Yquem being an iconic sweet wine from Sauternes), and had managed to maintain “impressive” freshness.
“The wine impressed us with its freshness on the palate,” he declared. “It is very, very fresh, with an almost acidic freshness.”
Calling it “a magical experience” El Khawand elaborated: “What we’re really doing when we open it [the wine] is unveiling a time capsule. We pull out this cork that has sealed the liquid off from its surroundings and, in a way, from the passage of time,” he told AFP.
“It is a memory, ultimately — a liquid memory, to be sure — but it is a memory of all those who came before us, of the work that was done.”
Partner Content
Nazi sympathisers
How did the wines get there? The castle itself was once owned by the Beaufort-Spontin family, which hid its prized wine collection underneath the property’s chapel floor before fleeing to Austria in haste during World War 2 after being suspected of collaborating with the Nazis.
The Beaufort-Spontins purchased Bečov Castle in 1813 and the ancestral home was passed down through generations, with the family established within the highest ranks of the Austrian-Hungarian nobility, until Bečov was confiscated by the Communists at the end of World War 2, and turned into a school, before eventually becoming the home of a local historical institute.
According to Reuters, the family reached out to American businessman Danny Douglas in 1984 to request his help in retrieving the wines, and the journey has been anything but linear since then.
Secret police
At some point in the early 2000s, Communist secret police are thought to have uncovered the wines underneath the chapel floor alongside the Reliquary of St. Maurus — said to hold the bones of St. John the Baptist — but while the police removed the holy relic and transported it to Prague, they left the wines untouched where they were.
It wasn’t until 10 years ago that the wine collection was rediscovered and it was at this point (2016) that Château d’Yquem became involved and reportedly employed a Coravin device to extract a sample of the wine without damaging the cork, to ascertain its provenance and quality.
Preservation work has been taking place on the wines since then, and the collection has now been deemed suitable for display.
Exhibition on the cards
Some of the bottles are currently on display inside Bečov Castle, with a full exhibition potentially on the cards later down the line if a fundraising campaign proves fruitful.
“If we raise the money, we will definitely want to do a more thorough analysis of the wines,” said Katerina Nyvltova, the collections manager at Bečov.
“And if we can recondition the rest, we’ll definitely go for it.”
Celebrity fans
Château d’Yquem has built up a loyal following of A-list supporters over the years, including Brooklyn and Nicola Beckham, who were photographed alongside a bottle of 1811 d’Yquem (worth £75,000 per bottle) at The Stonehouse restaurant in California.
Other firm fans include Gregg Popovich, the coach of NBA team San Antonio Spurs, based in Texas, who was gifted a bottle of 1949 d’Yquem (the same year as Popovich’s birth) by the winery following years of custom. Popovoch is rumoured to finish every meal out with a bottle of the sweet wine and was once seen polishing off d’Yquem alongside a burger.
Related news
Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz dine with a 1811 Château d’Yquem
San Antonio Spurs coach obsessed with Château d’Yquem
Château d’Yquem and Hedonism Wines to host £7,500 dinner
