Eight bottles of a legendary French wine that survived World War II and decades of communist rule hidden under a Czech castle floor have been lovingly restored by the chateau that produced them some 130 years ago. The bottles of Chateau d'Yquem -- one of the world's most expensive, highly-prized sweet white wines -- are a part of a collection of 136 bottles discovered at the western Czech castle of Becov nad Teplou in the 1980s, slated to go on display in the future. The collection once belonged to the noble Beaufort-Spontin family, who left the old Czechoslovakia hastily at the end of the war when they were suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis. The wine spent decades hidden under the floorboards of the castle chapel alongside the shrine of St Maurus before communist secret police found them in 1985. But while the shrine was taken to Prague at once to undergo extensive reconstruction before returning to Becov to be displayed in 2002, the wine was left where it was.
The wine is part of a collection of over 130 bottles that the castle plans to put on display © Michal Cizek / AFP
Ten years ago, it was rediscovered during stock-taking and a painstaking rescue operation began. Chateau d'Yquem, from the Sauternes area of Bordeaux, led the way, taking care of their eight wines, made in 1892 and 1896. "We tasted a very small quantity to be sure that, aromatically and in terms of balance on the palate and overall perception, the wine corresponded to a Chateau d'Yquem of that age," said the winery's cellar master Toni El Khawand. Laboratory tests proved the wine was a real Chateau d'Yquem, and the winery could then replace the corks and fit the original bottles with capsules to protect them. As the wine gradually gave way to oxygen, the winery had to re-bottle it, returning only five full original bottles to Becov as a result.
