Ancient Madeira to go under the hammer in New York

Christie’s New York is to put rare bottles of 18^th and 19^th century Madeira discovered at the Liberty Hall Museum in New Jersey under the hammer in December.

The Madeira demijohns were discovered at the Liberty Hall Museum in New Jersey

The auction house previewed the collection of old and rare Madeira in New York this week ahead of the auction on 7 December.

The auction will include a quartet of five-gallon demijohns of Madeira bottled in the mid-1800s and last re-corked in 1871, as well as about 20 regular bottles dating back to 1796. Additionally, the auction will feature four demijohns of America Bourbon from the late 19^th Century.

The collection was verified and classified by Francisco Albuquerque of the Madeira Wine Company, and the bottles are being re-corked with the assistance of Apcor, the Portuguese Cork Association.

“My father always had bottles stored all around the house,” said John Kean Sr., whose politically active family owned the museum building, constructed in the 1770’s, since 1811, before he turned it into a museum which he now heads.

“Since the family was in politics, they always needed a lot of spirits for their supporters. We decided we needed the space, so I was going to get rid of the demijohns stored in the attic and give them to the staff to use the bottles to make into lamps,” Kean added.

A Sercial from 1846 was among the Madeiras in the collection tasted in New York this week

Admitting he knew little about Madeira, “I thought the wine was so old it was spoiled,” he said. Another room filled with bottles was also opened in the basement. “We thought it was a closet,” Kean said.

The museum has kept some of the collection for an exhibit called ‘History in a Bottle’, and Christie’s will auction off the rest to provide funding for handicapped access to the museum, located on the campus of Kean University, including the installation of a lift.

The collection was recently transferred to Christie’s New York, where the bottles were opened, analysed and temporarily re-corked earlier this week.

As Madeira shipped in casks during the 18^th century was bottled at its destination, some were labelled, “Imported by the late Robert Lenox, Esq., via Philadelphia, in 1796.”

“Some were three-part molded bottles stamped on the bottom with ‘Rotterdam,’ which is my home city,” said Edwin Vos, head of wine in continental Europe for Christie’s, who is helping catalogue the collection.

Other bottles, including the demijohns, either were labeled vaguely or unlabeled. The two sampled at the preview tasting were a Sercial from 1846 and a Verdelho from the same period, somewhat unusual, Albuquerque said, because “95% of Madeira shipped then was Malmsey.”

Albuquerque and Vos were somewhat stumped when they opened one demijohn that didn’t taste like Madeira.

“We were still in a Madeira state of mind when we tasted it,” Albuquerque laughed, “and we couldn’t decide what kind of Madeira it was, so perhaps it was rum?”

They discovered that it, and three other demijohns were Bourbons well over a century in age. Details of the auction will be released soon.