Question about an old bottle of Valpolicella

[Brian C.]

We're visiting my mother in Phoenix for the holidays this week. My wife spent the evening making a cake for tomorrow night that called for Frangelico, so we had to go buy a bottle of it. I decided I would put the bottle back in the old liquor cabinet. This particular cabinet sees very little use. Anyway, I look in and see what is in the cabinet, out of curiosity. There was a big Gordon's vodka bottle that was glass and had a price tag that said about $8. Ancient. About three other bottles to the right of that bottle of other various liquors, almost done, and of no value or consequence. And lo and behold, to the left of the vodka was an unopened bottle of Valpolicella from 1978...

The brand is Secco-Bertani. It says "Valpolicella Valpantena." Nowhere on the bottle does it say anything about amarone, so I doubt it's that. Anyway, I'd be curious to know if this bottle has any real value, and if there is anything else I should know about this particular bottle. I'm sure my mom bought the bottle for when my grandfather visited from Europe back in the early 80s. I'm kind of surprised the bottle sat there for all these years.

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Roy Hersh]

Hi Brian,

I love Italian wine and used to secure allocations, write the wine lists and teach the service staff for a 5-state chain of Italian restaurants. My favorite region (to drink) in Italy is the Veneto and this particular wine was one that I know, although not the 1978. Current vintage of this Valp sells for well under $20 and older bottles don't sell for much more than double that. You probably should not count on much beyond hoping that the Valp would still be alive and an interesting drink at this point.

[Brian C.]

Well, we broke out the bottle today, to see what it was like after all these years. Unfortunately, the bottle had been long forgotten, and it had been upright during all that time. (It occurred to me later that this bottle was probably going to be bad.) So the cork crumbled, and after I ran the wine through a make-shift decanter, we found that the wine was horrible, as expected. I still have the taste in my mouth. But it was a fun exercise, nonetheless. How it was ignored in that cabinet after all these years, I'll never know. I think that old vodka bottle I mentioned earlier was the same one I poured out of for a stealth screwdriver back when I was in high school. It tasted so bad that I always ignored the cabinet after that, also.

[Roy Hersh]

Don't feel too bad. My parents were never really drinkers and never wine drinkers until very late in life when they were willing to taste birth year Ports/Madeiras that I brought to celebrate significant birthdays.

They had a full bar though for friends, when they threw dinner parties. Often times they'd receive bottles of wine as gifts and the stuff would sit in there forever. I ignored that for many years and in around 2003, my dad asked me to dump whatever was no good. I found 35 year old bottles of CA Chardonnay and worse in there. I did open 2-3 bottles of 20 year old stuff that I thought might have some redeeming value. Not a single one was worth saving but one or two were interesting science experiments nonetheless. I did come across a very old Bin 27 by Fonseca and a 5 year old Malmsey but I don't remember the producer.