2026-06-08
A cache of rare wines and cognacs once hidden beneath the floor of a castle chapel in what is now the Czech Republic is drawing new attention after specialists confirmed and stabilized several bottles of Château d’Yquem dating to the 1890s.
The collection, valued by the Czech National Heritage Institute at about $5 million if sold at auction, includes at least 130 bottles from the late 19th century, among them labels such as Pedro Ximenes 1899 and Porto 1892. It was found at the medieval hilltop complex of Bečov nad Teplou in western Czech Republic, a property once owned under the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Beaufort-Spontin family, an aristocratic German-speaking dynasty with holdings across Central Europe.
The bottles were hidden after World War II, when Czechoslovakia confiscated the estate in 1945 and its owners left. For decades, the wines remained concealed under the chapel floor beside a valuable religious reliquary. Communist secret police discovered both in 1985.
The reliquary, considered one of the country’s most important sacred objects, was quickly transferred to Prague for extensive restoration and later returned to Bečov for public display in 2002. The wine collection, by contrast, stayed at the castle and was largely overlooked for years. It resurfaced about a decade ago during an inventory, setting off a careful preservation effort that has continued since then.
Château d’Yquem took part in that work by examining bottles produced in 1892 and 1896. The estate replaced corks and added protective capsules to help preserve what remained inside. Toni El Khawand, cellar master at Château d’Yquem, said the team first tasted a sample to verify that the wine’s balance and overall profile matched what would be expected from an Yquem of that age. Laboratory analysis later confirmed its origin.
As the wine gradually reacted to oxygen during handling, the estate had to transfer some of it into other containers, meaning only five original bottles could be sent back to Bečov still full. Even so, El Khawand described tasting the rescued wine as a rare experience. He said its high sugar content helped it survive more than a century and that it still showed striking freshness on the palate, with an almost acidic edge.
He said the wine revealed layers of cinnamon and nutmeg along with notes he described as more typical of an old Yquem, including chocolate, coffee and oud. Speaking during a presentation of the restored bottles, he called opening them “like uncapping time.”
Although Czech heritage officials have estimated the collection’s market value in the millions of dollars, El Khawand declined to put a price on the Yquem bottles themselves. He said their importance is not mainly financial but moral and historical. He described them as a form of memory tied to the people who made them and to the labor behind them.
No sale is planned. Instead, Bečov Castle intends to exhibit the full collection to the public. Castle officials have launched a fundraising campaign to support further conservation work and hope to carry out deeper analysis of the wines. Katerina Nyvltova, who oversees collections at the site, said managers also want to recondition more of the bottles if possible.
The story adds another layer to Bečov’s unusual history as a place where major cultural objects were hidden during political upheaval and then recovered decades later. In this case, what survived was not only a noble family’s cellar but also a record of European drinking culture from before the collapse of empires and before two world wars reshaped ownership across the region.
For wine historians and preservation specialists, the find is notable not only because of its age but because fortified and sweet wines from that period can sometimes endure in ways dry wines cannot. The survival of late-19th-century Yquem in drinkable condition is especially significant because it offers direct evidence of how one of France’s most famous sweet wines evolves over more than 100 years when protected from light and disturbance, even under improvised conditions.
At Bečov, those conditions were far from ideal by modern cellar standards, yet they were enough to keep part of the collection intact until experts could intervene. The castle now hopes that public display and additional study will turn what was once a forgotten wartime hiding place into one of Central Europe’s most unusual wine heritage exhibits.