A work friend recently unearthed a cache of alcohol hidden behind a wall in the kitchen of the house he just moved into. Apparently, the family dog leaned against it the right way - and presto: Booze!
There is apparently darn near a **bar **inside the wall, and he’s slowly trying to figure out what he has and what might or might not be salvageable - or valuable.
I’m thinking he needs some kind of website or calculation chart site that may be able to provide him info to make informed decisions. Neither of us has a clue as to whether or not any of the stuff is drinkable - hence the first question about the Crown Royal. He said the house was built in 1963, so a fair estimate is none of it is older than that. Maybe…
Well according to the Wikipedia entry for Crown Royal, it was created as a brand in 1939 by Seagram to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s royal visit to Canada, and not available outside of Canada until 1964.
Your location is in Indiana so the bottle isn’t likely to be any older than that, unless the former owner was in the habit of running from Indiana to Canada for hooch from 1940 through 1964.
As far as my experience goes, Crown Royal is generally treated as a mixer whiskey today, but of a variety of blended whiskey that is good enough to stand on its own - on a par with, say, Chivas Regal or Johnny Walker Black. It’s considered “Top Shelf” (premium) relative to other commonly available whiskeys, but is not expensive, rare or having any connoisseur or snob appeal like an old bottle of single malt scotch might. In today’s terms, figure it’s about $25 for a 750ml bottle (a “fifth”).
I’ve not heard of it spoken as a whiskey that’s “gone downhill” so I’d expect that to have been the case in 1964 as well. Reasonably good stuff that shows the person wasn’t just drinking to get blasted, but not valuable as in rare or show-off expensive.
This article says that spirits in sealed bottles should remain drinkable pretty much indefinitely.
Apparently there may be a market for some “collectable” older liquors, but as the author notes, the trouble is finding a buyer. You can’t sell liquor on eBay, for instance.
I have a pristine copy of Life Magazine, dated November 27, 1939. In it are lots of ads for hard liquour, unfortunately none of which give a price. In fact, the only ad in the magazine that does give this information is one for Studebaker, which you can see at this link.
The magazine is a fascinating document. One of the featured articles is a photo essay showing photographs taken from a German bomber of a bombing raid over the Firth of Forth. Good views of bombs exploding very close to several British naval ships.
According to a New York Times ad from December 1939, whiskey was selling for between $1.29 to $5.25 per quart (the latter was a 14-year-old rye; rye was by far the most popular whiskey back then).
Seagram’s Crown Royal doesn’t appear in ads until the end of 1963, and those say it is now available in the US for the first time. Nothing with a definite price, but an ad from 1966 refers to it as costing “about $9.00 a fifth.”
I’m not surprised; I’d suspect one would be far more likely to be able to find ads with prices of liquor in local newspapers (the ads having been placed by liquor stores).
thanks, all for the info. i’ll see if i can get some pix from him.
i chose 1939 because i thought crown royal was started in that year when i was doing some quickie, half-baked research on company time yesterday. we were curious about how much a bottle might have gone for at the time, vs what it costs now.
I just had an experience like this, only the liquor wasn’t hidden. When my grandmother recently moved to assisted living we cleaned out her house and I took my grandfather’s whisky from the kitchen.
These included two unopened bottles of V.O. from the early 80s and an unopened bottle of Crown Royal from 1971.
These have proved to be perfectly serviceable and are being slowly consumed at my home in Northern Virginia.
