CNN reports today that the "world's oldest beer has been found in a shipwreck" at the bottom of the Baltic Sea (north of Finland). Salvage divers found the cache of 1800-era beer and drug it to the surface for further investigation (a picture of the bottle is above, right before Napoleon and the HBO depiction of President John Adams and his famous lovely wife, Abigail).The "old style" brew just discovered is actually believed to be drinkable, having aged at a constant temperature of around 32 degrees Fahrenheit and with no light exposure to spoil it. "The culture in the beer is still living," they say, although it's reportedly not known if the old beer has now gone flat. A local beer brewer is actually looking looking to tap into the old beer's chemical contents and recipe in order to see if it can be replicated in the modern day!
And wouldn't ya just love to get a sip (or many) of this strange old brew? Well, be prepared to buck up. Champagne bottles found on the same shipwreck have already been valued in the tens of thousands of dollars per bottle, and the beer bottles will undoubtedly fetch a similar price. I figure that amounts to about $5K a drink! Sorry, but as much as I might like to sample those old spirits, do you have any freakin' idea how much Keystone Ice that I could buy with $5000? Enough for at least 3-4 weeks, that's how much. But I digress.
Anyway, the ship itself is believed to have been heading from Copenhagen, Denmark to St. Petersburg, Russia -- possibly sent to carry gifts from the French regime to the Russian royal family. Which got me thinking and trying to recall: What the hell was going on in the world around 1799? Well, quite a damn bit. Check it:
-1799 was just 10 years removed from the ratification of our beloved American Constitution in 1789 and 8 years following the ratification of our Bill of Rights (i.e. the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution) in 1791.
-1799 saw the death of George Washington, while the second American President, John Adams, sat in the Oval Office (the same legendary John Adams who was a part of the drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence, an incredible historical document primarily drafted by Adams' sometimes friend and sometimes rival, Thomas Jefferson, the great American political philosopher who died on the same day as Adams -- July 4, 1826 -- precisely 50 years to the day from the adoption of said Declaration of Independence).
-1799 also saw the end of the French Revolution and the ascension of Napoleon Bonaparte to the ruler (and eventual Emperor) of France, overthrowing the French government that had been installed as a result of the bloody revolution that had started in 1789 ("Off With Their Heads!"/A Tale of Two Cities). A mere 13 years later saw Napoleon's infamous and ill-advised invasion of Russia and the fatal retreat of the French army through the brutal Russian winter -- an historical scene that repeated itself 130 years later as the Russian Red Army of the Soviet Union drove Hitler's minions from Russia across an identical bitter winter.
-A few years later, 1803, saw the United States Supreme Court's historical landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), which represented the first recognition of the power of federal courts to review the constitutionality of statutes and other laws.
So there was a lot goin' on around 1799! I sometimes wish I could've been there to share one of those old brewskies (as found on the shipwreck) with the likes of Adams and Jefferson (you can keep Napoleon -- I have a feeling he was a real piece of work!). Yes, would have been cool to have been there. But as General George S. Patton, Jr. (not to mention Shirley MacLaine) might say: Perhaps I was.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/baltic.sea.beer/index.html?hpt=T2
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