A secret cache of 133 bottles of late 19th-century wine, hidden beneath a chapel floor at Becov castle in the Czech Republic, has been restored by Château d’Yquem and is now on public display. The bottles, mostly dating from 1892 to 1899, were discovered in 1985 after being concealed at the end of the Second World War by the castle's then-owners, the Beaufort-Spontin family.
The family, labelled Nazi sympathisers, hid the wine alongside a reliquary of St. Maurus, said to contain the bones of St John the Baptist, before fleeing to Austria. In 1984, they enlisted American businessman Danny Douglas to secretly retrieve the treasure, leading to its eventual discovery by authorities.
Toni El Khawand, Cellar Master at Château d’Yquem, said the chapel provided perfect storage conditions: "very humid and very cold, with thick walls, and also underground so it preserved the moisture and temperature in a very constant way." The wine's quality was confirmed in 2016 using a Coravin device. The restoration preserved the original dust on the bottles.
The collection is now on display at Becov castle in Becov nad Teplou. Separately, a vast wine collection once owned by Soviet leader Josef Stalin was recently unsealed in Tbilisi, Georgia. The 40,000 bottles, some dating to the early 1800s, will be auctioned to fund a new education school.
