Century-Old Whiskey Bottles Found in Missouri Man’s Attic

Century-Old Whiskey Bottles Found in Missouri Man's Attic

In order to save money on the installation of central air-conditioning in his St. Joseph, Mo., home, Bryan Fite, 40, began replacing the wires in his attic himself, prying up the floor boards on the rafters. Accidentally, he discovered a treasure beneath the floorboards: 13 bottles of century-old whiskey.

Fite, who grew up in St. Joseph, returned to settle in his hometown in September 2011 after working in Kansas City for several years. The house he and his wife Emily bought was built in the 1850s and needed some repair works, Fite said.

The cost of central A/C installation was a little expensive, he said, so he got to work in his attic. What first appeared to Fite as a set of strangely shaped insulated pipes turned out to be the secret whiskey stash of one of the house's former owners – or so goes Fite's main theory of how the bottles of liquor ended up there.

When they bought the house, the Fites received a paper abstract detailing the history of its ownership. One of the owners, Fite said, had to give up the house when he was consigned to a sanitarium "for alcohol reasons." Fite hypothesizes that this alcoholic hid the bottles in the attic for some future occasion.

"Unfortunately, he never got the chance," Fite said.

All the whiskey in Fite's attic was bottled in 1917 and distilled between 1912 and 1913. Fite said the four bottles of Hellman's Celebrated Old Crow whiskey he found may have been among the last of their kind.

In addition to the Old Crow bottles, Fite also discovered a few bottles of Guckenheimer, the erstwhile Pennsylvania rye whiskey, and W. H. McBrayer's Cedar Brook whiskey.

In 2017, when the bottles turn 100, Fite and his friends will pop them open, he said. But for now, they are simply antiques and trophies of his rare discovery.

"Part of the allure for me is having them in their original state," said Fite, who identified bourbon as his drink of choice. "I have high expectations of what they'll taste like, and I'm afraid if I open them I'll be disappointed."

Posted by James Fried on Sunday July 08 2012, 7:00 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0