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. LAT. "When Beringer Vineyards was acquired by Wine World in 1970, the new owners walked through the hand-dug aging caves behind the famed Rhine House and discovered a cache of some 4,000 bottles of old Beringer red wines dating back to Prohibition days. The bottles hadn’t been touched in decades and retained all the old cobwebs and dust of the ages. However, in March of 1993, the winery realized that some of the wines were undrinkable, and that the remainder would soon lose their corks through deterioration. So a team of winemakers cleaned out the old bins and recorked some 1,800 bottles that were considered to be drinkable, including the pictured bottle of 1937 Cabernet Sauvignon. The remainder of the wines were spoiled and were discarded. Incidentally, one perfect bottle of 1937 Beringer Cabernet was the first bottle ever sold at the first Napa Valley Wine Auction in 1981. The bottle was purchased by Marvin Shanken, editor and publisher of the Wine Spectator magazine, for $400." Dan Berger, Los Angeles Times, Jul 1994 |