The Harewood Barbados rum, bottled in 1780, bought to a collector in Switzerland for a world-record value of $29,999, based on Miami-based Old Liquors‘ supervisor Bart Laming.
This rum has a wealthy historical past relationship again to the 18th century and was produced in Barbados for the Harewood House Estate — owned by the household many know from the British tv sequence Downton Abbey — and saved in its cellar. The bottle was found in 2011 and bought at Christie’s in 2013 for $9,500.
Two extra bottles from the identical assortment now sit on a shelf at Old Liquors, the uncommon spirits retailer that lately started promoting its wares to the general public. Both dust-laden glass bottles are marked solely by the wax that sealed them and a easy paper tag hanging from the neck.
According to Laming, they’re solely a snippet of the rarities collectors and lovers can discover at Old Liquors and a part of what makes up a uncommon spirits cellar amassed all through three generations, most lately owned by Bay van der Bunt.
It contains the oldest recognized Madeira from 1715, a cognac from 1747, Scotch from 1842, and an Armagnac from the 1800s.
“These bottles are liquid time capsules, able to capture a time and place unlike anything else in the world because it’s something you can actually experience with your senses,” Laming says. “These are bottles you can open, experience, and share with your friends and family.”
Today, Old Liquors is targeted on connecting spirit connoisseurs with classic bottles of the world’s rarest liquors.
Laming tells New Times that van der Bunt obtained the primary bottles of his assortment from his father, who usually traveled between France and the Netherlands. He acquired a ardour from his personal father, a home steward at a British property who was gifted bottles from the proprietor’s personal non-public assortment.
“Some of these bottles are the oldest of their kind in the world, including that rum we recently sold for $30,000,” says Laming. “But we also believe we have one of the oldest Madeiras in the world, from 1715, and cognac from 1811.”
For the previous 30 years, van der Bunt has managed to amass a staggering assortment of his personal, in the present day totaling round 10,000 bottles of uncommon and classic spirits that date again so far as the early 1700s.
Despite the unbelievable historical past of his cellar, van der Bunt doesn’t preserve his assortment as a museum. Instead, he has moved his assortment to Miami, the place Laming manages it.
Old Liquors supervisor Bart Laming pours an 1848 cognac on the firm’s Doral tasting room.
Photo by Nicole Danna
In 2012, van der Bunt determined to take his assortment public. This 10,000-bottle cellar, initially housed in his house in Norway, contains among the world’s oldest and most interesting spirits and wines provided for retail. The web site permits prospects to peruse the cellar. While purchases could be made regionally and in particular person, the corporate additionally ships nationwide and globally.
While it is troublesome to place a value on such one-of-a-kind objects, Laming says the cellar’s oldest picks — just like the 1715 Madeira and the rarest within the assortment — have the potential to promote for upwards of $100,000 apiece.
Laming, who relocated to the US in 2019, initially deliberate to open Old Spirits in 2020, however the pandemic introduced logistical challenges that pushed the official launch to October 2022.
After tasting dozens of wines and spirits throughout 4 centuries, Laming continues van der Bunt’s mission of discovering uncommon and distinctive liquors so as to add to the gathering, attending auctions and vetting gives from consumers trying to promote classic wines and spirits.
Today, the enterprise is slowly constructing a buyer base in Miami, the place the aim is to supply uncommon spirits aficionados an opportunity to deal with, pattern, and buy the world’s oldest wine-based spirits.
Part of that imaginative and prescient additionally contains promoting to institutions desirous about providing classic spirits to the general public with an onsite bottle checklist that lists pours by the half ounce or ounce, provides Laming.
Despite its location and outward look, go via the door into the Old Liquors tasting and storage facility, and you may really feel you have been transported to an old-world European property wine room. Indeed, the room was designed as a duplicate of van der Bunt’s Norwegian cellar.
While it isn’t open to the general public, these desirous about buying objects listed on the Old Liquors web site can request an in-person assembly the place they’ll maintain — typically even style — the bottles on website.
A protracted tasting desk shows uncommon bottle picks — an 1848 cognac amongst them — Laming chosen particularly for tastings. Many are half of a bigger assortment of bottles he is chosen for an upcoming occasion, a uncommon spirits-tasting dinner slated to happen at Klaw on Saturday, February 18. The dinner will supply attendees a one-of-a-kind pairing alongside two dozen of Old Spirits’ most coveted bottles.
“This is the primary tasting of this magnitude, I imagine, on the earth,” says Laming. “It would be the expertise of a lifetime. These bottles have by no means been provided to the general public earlier than, and positively not with a large-scale tasting occasion.”
The tasting, open to simply 24 folks for round $2,750 per particular person, will characteristic bottles that span 200 years of vintages, from a Madeira bottled in 1790 to an 1880 cognac. Moving ahead, Laming hopes to supply comparable tasting occasions, one thing virtually remarkable within the uncommon spirits world.
“This cellar is a testomony to the enduring enchantment of uncommon, distinctive liquors, and we’re proud to share a chunk of the world of high-quality rum amassing right here in Miami,” sums up Laming.