The oldest known bottle of whiskey will be auctioned in June and is expected to fetch $20,000 to $40,000, but maybe much more because of its rich history.
The bottle, called the Old Ingledew Whiskey, was originally thought to date from 1850.
However, the whiskey was tested by Joseph Hyman, a fine spirits specialist at Skinner Auctioneers, in partnership with scientists from the University of Georgia and the University of Glasgow, and it was concluded that it was most likely distilled between 1763 and 1803, making it the oldest whiskey bottle known.
"We took a sample and tested by Carbon 14 dating, and determined with an 81.1% probability that the Bourbon was produced between 1763-1803, which places it in the historical context of The Revolutionary War and the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s," Hyman said.
Carbon 14 dating is a technique for determining the age of an item containing organic material, including spirits, by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
According to Barron's, the Old Ingledew, which was bottled by Evans & Ragland, Grocers and Commission Merchants of LaGrange, Georgia, once belonged to Wall Street financier John Pierpont Morgan, who purchased it during a business trip to the state.
In the early 1940s, Morgan's son Jack gave the bottle to future U.S. Supreme Court justice and South Carolina governor James Byrnes. Two other bottles of the whiskey were sent to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, but only this one has survived.
According to Hyman, Byrnes eventually returned to South Carolina to run for governor and served from 1951 to 1955, during which time he gave the bottle to his close friend and drinking buddy, Francis Drake.
Before this offering, the bottle had been in the family for more than 65 years.
The bottle of Old Ingledew Whiskey will highlight Skinner's online-only spirits auction during the last week of June. It's estimated to sell for somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000, but with the whiskey's history, don't be surprised if it ends up selling for more.
