Sibylla Bostoniensis

[Content advisory: alcohol]

I got Aunt C's booze.

Okay, some entirely unnecessary but entertaining back story. When tn3270 and I were cleaning out her apartment back in October, I tackled the pantry, on the bottom of which, under heaps of boxes of ziplocs andplastic wrap, grocery bags plastic and otherwise, and Tupperware, was, to my surprise, a cache of liquor. This was surprising because not only have I never seen Aunt C drink, I seemed to recall tn3270 reporting she didn't drink.

And, honestly, the assertion that she didn't drink was not contested by this find: the bottles that had been opened had been re-sealed with masking tape, and had thick layers of dust on them, and many of the bottles had never been opened at all, as evidenced by the unbroken tax stamps on them.

For those of you who were unaware, the federal government of the USA required that alcoholic spirits be sold with a tax stamp, sealing the bottle closed, until 1985.

Which meant that at least some of this booze was at least 30 years old.

Well, I like alcohol, so we shoved it all in a box and I hauled it home. Subsequently, I asked Aunt C about it.

She denied its existence.

I pointed out that I had it, and it was real. Given its apparent age and neglect, I asked, "I was wondering if it had belonged to your ex-husband, Ro–" She slammed her hand down on the table, "DON'T SAY THAT NAME". She then said that the upstairs neighbors must have snuck in and put that booze there in her pantry.

So my theory is that when she and He Who Must Not Be Named separated, she held on to his liquor collection out of spite. That perhaps explains some of it – other bottles seem to be from well after their separation, and was perhaps gifts given her. But I get ahead of myself.

Having gotten the bottles home, I dusted them and hauled them into the light, and discovered that two of the bottles had dated tax stamps on them. I'm sitting here with a fifth – opened, alas, and four-fifths empty – of Seagram's Crown Royal from 1955, and an unopened nip (1/10th pint) of Canadian Club from 1958, making them 62 and 59 years old respectively.

Most of the cache are liquors, plus a few things that seem to be wines; the liquors are mostly whiskeys, and all the whiskeys are blends. While most of the distilled spirits have been opened and are partially consumed, there are some notable unopened bottles. In addition to the 1958 nip of Canadian Club, I found unopened:

• A 750ml bottle of Folonari Soavi (wine).
• A nip from which the front and back labels, if any, had fallen off, but the tax stamp (maybe not authentic? but intack) has printed on it, on the cap, "Johnny Walker Scotch".
• A nip of Southern Comfort with intact tax stamp.
• A nip of Fleischmann's Whiskey with intact tax stamp.
• A fifth of Chivas Regal with intact tax stamp and original gift box.
• One litre of Dewar's White Label, no tax stamp, in gift box.
• Three nips of J&B, two with intact tax stamps, and one with the tax stamp detached on one side, but all unopened.
• A fifth of J&B with intact tax stamp.

Regarding that fifth of J&B: some quality time with Bing images and MastersofMalt.com suggests to me that the label design dates it to the 1950s or 1960s. The label is a match for this (though mine here is in much better shape), and not any of the later labels they have, but it has a screw-top. It would be useful to know, for dating, when they cut over from corks to screw-tops, but I haven't figured that out yet and there's no contact info on the J&B website.

I am increasingly suspecting that a whole lot of the alcohol is from before 1970.

The opened bottles are more diverse, thought there's an opened bottle of J&B that has the 1970s label. Besides that and the 1955 Crown Royal, there's a bottle of creme de cacao, a litre of Barcadi (hecho en Mexico!), a mostly empty bottle of Fleischmann's gin, a bottle of coffee liquer, a fifth of Metaxa ouzo, a mostly empty pint of Smirnoff's vodka, a bottle of Dubonnet (wine) the bottom of the bottle says 1975, etc.

Now I am trying to figure out what to do with it all. I'm not quite sure what to do with this information. Questions abound...

0) Is it safe to drink?
1) Is it good to drink?
1a) Are any of these things improved by age?
2) Is any of it valuable, in terms of money?
2a) If so, how would an American go about selling it?
2b) There are laws about this sort of thing, yes?

I already sampled the creme de cacao (it was an opened bottle) and subsequently got an upset stomach. Might have been a coincidence, but it wasn't, shall we say, a compelling taste experience that made me eagar to try again. I don't know if it's supposed to taste like that or went bad. Does creme de cacao go bad?

Similarly, I sampled some of the Seagram 7 Crown Whiskey (already opened) in one of those limited edition "crystal" decanters they do, which some random eBay listing (I'd link, but it's gone now) proposed is from 1969, so I guess it's 48 years old? I didn't get ill, but it didn't taste good to me. I don't know if that's because it went off, or that's generally what Seagram 7 Crown Whiskey tastes like. I wouldn't know, I've never had it previously; my tastebuds are innocent of the ways of blends, because I was introduced to whiskey by implacable single-malt militants.*

One of the problems here is that none of this stuff is my regular sauce, and I have no idea what it's supposed to taste like, for comparison purposes. And that's also one of the things that intrigues me – free samples of things I've never tried!

Also, I'd like to not get food poisoning, and I'd like to know before I crack something open that it would be worth a lot of money unopened.

Now I'm not sure if I have custody of things that are actually quite valuable, or are fabulously tasty rare treat, or whether they should be poured down the sink before someone mistakes them for potable, or something in between or a combination.

Advice is welcome.

* ETA, for the record: Laphroaig, at least until they invent something peatier. Classic over the quarter cask, and the older the better.

ETA2: This knowledgable-sounding blog post asserts that all private (unlicensed) sale of alcohol in the US is illegal. Furthermore, the USPS does not allow alcohol, and FedEx and UPS only allow shipping by people with licenses to sell.

ETA3: I just found The LA Whisk(e)y Society. Very educational. They are uninterested in blends younger than 1950, and nips of any age, so that rules my collection out.