Expert: Paul Wagner - 9/29/2009

Question
Hi there -- I came across a bottle of Jurgen Peters Schiedam, found at the bottom of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island. It's probably around 200 years old. It was unsealed when found last weekend, but the cork popped out on its own the day after it came to the surface... Smells boozy and funky. So my question is, can you tell me anything about this brand? And do you have advice on drinking it?

Answer
HI David

Schiedam, a town in Holland, was a major source of gin for centuries, and bottled gin under a lot of different names.  I haven't heard of Jurgen Peters--but gin names are a dime a dozen, as any merchant who wanted to start a brand could simply call up the distillery and order some product.  

I don't know how old your bottle is--is there a date on it?  How do you guess that it is 200 years old?  

Here is my concern about your bottle.  Distilled products like this are about 50% alcohol, and as such are really pretty safe.  Not much that is bad for you can live in that kind of environment, and such spirits are really pretty stable.

HOWEVER, the fact that the cork popped out of your bottle worries me.  That means that in some way the pressure inside the bottle was not the same as the pressure outside the bottle.  How can that happen?  Well, if the bottle was on the bottom of the harbor, then it was under pressure, and over 100-200 years, it probably leaked.  That allowed something more than just gin into the bottle.  And when you pulled it up to the surface, the pressure inside the bottle, with the NEW ADDITION to its contents, was greater than the pressure at sea level.  So the cork popped.

Now the question is:  what leaked into that bottle?  Answer?  Probably just seawater.  And if it was only a few ml of seawater, added to the gin, it is still probably safe to drink.  But the fact that the seawater was able to get past the cork indicates that the cork was no longer making a perfect seal.  So it could be only one cl of seawater...or it could be that the cork also allowed a lot of gin to leak out over time, and replace that with seawater.  In which case you may very well have something that is about 3% alcohol, and the rest seawater and whatever else is in a liquid state at the bottom of the harbor.

Not an attrative idea.

That said, distilled spirits are so high in alcohol that they don't really change over time, the way some fine wines do.  So even if it is almost pure gin, it won't have improved, or changed in the bottle much.  So it won't taste much different from current bottlings of gin.

If it were mine?  I don't think I would drink any without at least performing a basic anlysis to determine the alcohol level of what's inside...but I bet a local winery could do that in their lab without much trouble---and might do it just for curiosity's sake!

Hope that helps

Paul Wagner