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Hi all,
One if my gifts this year was phenomenal. A friend if my 85 yr old mother gave me a bottle if champagne for the Pierce. I just smiled. He then handed the bottle to me. I then noticed, the bottle was from 1929. 
The only thing he asked is that he receive a pic of the bottle with the car. I almost fell over. He had this bottle for the past 40 years.
The story goes like this. As a young man, mike managed a huge liquor store in California. One day an older lady came in the store and told Mike that she was celebrating her 65 anniversary. However, her husband died a week earlier. Mike gave her a special bottle on the house for her to celebrate with. She cried.
4 days later the same lady came back into the store with the 1929 bottle and gave it to mike as a gift. She was sure it was bad to drink. Mike kept the bottle for the next 50 years until he gifted it to me. Mike thought it was fate and the bottle needed to be with the pierce. I am so grateful. I will get it encased. .
Rick
!
Wow, what a great piece of history! That vineyard well predates 1929….
http://www.valkyrieselections.com/webmedia/Champagne%20Prieur%20Brut%20Technical%20Sheet.pdf
Wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it.
Robert
I’m glad people like the story. I apologize for my ever increasing typos. My fingers are too fat for my phone. This coupled with auto correct, I’m doomed. Thanks for everyone’s patience.
Does anyone know anything about ” old” wines, champagnes!!!!?
Thanks. Rick
Bon-appetit!
When phones first had the capability to have text written, the keys were uber-small…you could add a tag line to your messages in the company I worked for, and so I added “Thumbs are big, keys are small, forgive mistakes, one and all”…..and pretty soon a LOT of people in the company used the same tag line!
Now we have auto correct, witch wee awl no is grate, as it nose watt wee whish two say…..
As to your question about a wine expert, I’m not one, but I’d bet that bottle was good until about 1940, and then, without proper storage (orientation and temperature), it went downhill, and it’s not drinkable now. I’d leave it as is and admire the fact it survived, rather than break the seal and have just an old bottle..
Even with proper storage it would be very unlikely to be drinkable today and would be flat. I’ve had a couple of bottles of old champagne, and one which was almost past its prime was very sweet and not very bubbly, and neither characteristic was true when the same wine was young.
I noted the importer was Hiram Walker, more known for whisk(e)y, and the bottle must have been imported shortly after the 18th Amendment was repealed.
Best to have it in a display case and preserve the bottle and label intact.
I say next time you meet a car owner talking up his Packard or Peerless and putting down a Pierce Arrow you should make friends with him and offer him a glass of champagne! 😃
You know, This “Three P Nonsense” has gone on about long enough. The Peerless was probably a good car (all four or five of them that they built). To continually cliche’ them with Packard and Pierce for whatever euphonic delight it brought some people, maybe should stop!
Peerless probably produced a plethora…to perpetuate personification of pertinent or prevalent production is pervasive, but preposterous….
Some wines will survive time.There was a restaurant in Taos that had a red from 1896 and 1937 Blue Nun on the wine list and that was 1980 when a friend and I were there.We did not try either but there were several older wines.As a child I remember reading about Captain Cousteau exploring a sunken Greek wine ship that was about 2000 or so years old and the divers tasted the wine.
As I recall it had alot of tannin.Alot depends on how the wine was stored and the type of wine.
Be careful about very ‘old’ wines for sale. Many are fake. Anyone can refill an old bottle. This book is one of the best stories on this topic.
Robert
There are bottles of wine at the “Titanic”” site.It is very cold down where she is and those reds might still be nice to drink.A number of bottles have had the corks implode from the pressure.There might be some good saki at Truk Lagoon.”
Tony, lighten up on the three P thing. The reputation was started in
the early days when it was a well deserved thing. The three P’s had
the same quality though engineering was different. P. A. started
with birdcages and Peerless started with clothes wringers. Both
produced bicycles and used De Dion 1 cylinder engines in their
first cars. Pierce did reliability contests, Peerless(Winton
also) took their racing cars to Europe. With Barney Oldfield, the
Peerless Dragon set many world records and were top winners.
Peerless was the only other make to offer a 825 cube engine like
P. A.’s top offering(topping Packard’s by 300 cubes). Their 48HP
6 was stroked to be larger than the Pierce’s. In 1904 P. A.’s top
offering was a 93″ wheelbase, 24-28HP Great Arrow for $4,000 with
a problematic column shifter. Peerless’s best was a 102″ wheelbase
35HP, costing $6000.Peerless abruptly quit making top tier autos in
1916 when they only offered cars in the Cadillac range(Cad was a
mid priced car until the 20’s). By 1925 you could buy a top of the
line Peerless 4 pass. touring for $3,285 and P. A. Model 33 was
$5,250. This later fall from grace is what colors your opinion,
but the three P catchy phrase will outlive us both and further the
reputation of all three P’s.
Tony, thanks you. I learned some things about Peerless I didn’t know. When Freddy Tycher was alive, he convinced the guys at Hemmings to make a classification of “Packard, Peerless, and Pierce-Arrow”. They did that for a year or so, and then went back to “Packard” classification. Pierce-Arrow and Peerless were relegated to the “P” section.
I’m no Champagne expert but I dragged up a bottle of Champagne about ten years ago in 30 fathom of water five miles off of Provincetown on Stellwagen Bank. No label was left on it. When we got to the dock the crew pestered me to pop the cork. Didn’t take too much convincing. Anyway, it was still bubbly and very drinkable, not great but not bad either. When I looked at the cork it was dated 1919. I guess being that deep kept it quite cold for 80+ years and preserved it.
It’s the time of that season.
A link to some champagne facts; scroll through all to see some interesting facts about champagne.
Mike & Pat
The post about the Champagne in 30 fathoms of water sounds interesting.Not so very far from where the Andrea Doria went down in the summer of 1956.There should be some good wine there.My dad and I were almost passengers
on that voyage as he had planned a trip to Europe for us.I was sent to summer camp instead and on a kid’s radio in our cabin the news bulletin about the sinking of the Andrea Doria came on.When I spoke with my dad on the phone the next day.He said we had our return reservations from Genoa to New York on that very voyage when the ship sank.That would be something one would never forget.