For most, the joyous recovery of ancient alcohol means "finding a forgotten Bud in the back of the fridge." But a lucky few get to taste truly ancient elixirs, like a sailing team led by Christian Ekstrom, which discovered 30 bottles of hundreds-of-decades-old champagne on a wrecked ship between Sweden and Finland.

They brought one bottle back to verify the wreck's age, then "verified" the champagne as well. With each bottle expected to fetch $68,000 at auction, the happy crew were swallowing $1,000 a mouthful.

That's true luxury -- sailing on a boat, drinking an irreplaceable alcohol from 1780 just because you can.

Keep reading for five more of the world's oldest alcohols.


5. Cryogenic Whisky
Sir Ernest Shackleton was a hell of a guy: setting the then–world record for getting closest to the South Pole in 1909, turning back to save the lives of his team, making an 800-mile sea trip (in an open-topped boat painted in seal blood) to fetch help for his shipwrecked crew and now we find that he left us all a drink.

The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust found crates of Whyte and Mackay whisky frozen in the basement of the base camp for Shackleton's South Pole expedition, and no one's happier about this than Whyte and Mackay. The original recipes for this blend had been lost and they've already made plans to analyze and replicate the original blend.

They could call it "Whyte and Mackay's Goddamn Hero Whisky." You should probably resist the urge to order it with ice.

4. Fossil Fuel Beer
A century is old, two centuries is better, but 450,000 centuries is ridiculous -- and real! The Fossil Fuels Brewing Company realized that Jurassic Park's main problem was cloning vicious predators (which consume humans) instead of beer (which humans consume).

Doctor Cano, who, despite his name, is not trying to kill James Bond, recovered 45-million-year-old yeast from a Lebanese weevil preserved in amber, and he did the natural thing for a super-scientist hero: used it to brew an anciently delicious beer.


3. 64-Year Glenfiddich
Good things come to those who wait, better things to those who wait longer, and $37,000 come to Glenfiddich for waiting 64 years to sell some Scotch. That's $500 a sip, so it's worth considerably more than you'll be at that age. It's also much more enjoyable to spend time with, and we can guarantee no one will put any part of sextuagenarian-you in their mouths no matter how many dollars you offer.

Only 61 bottles were ever produced, and some speculators are turning to Scotch as a safe investment as opposed to the stock market. It's a smart bet because, unlike shares, bottles of Scotch base their worth on something you can hold in your hands, tastes great and will be useful after the collapse of civilization.

2. The $60,000 Evening
An unknown businessman showed every single one of those Scotch-saving nancies exactly how it's done: He walked into a hotel displaying a bottle of Dalmore 62, one of only 12 ever made (and the only one not in private collections or held in storage at the original distillery), bought it for $58,000, marched up to a hotel room with some friends and drank it.

Understand: This bottle wasn't part of the bar, it was a luxurious hotel decoration and, at that price, probably counted as part of the architecture. The blend was bottled 62 years ago (duh) from four extraordinary single malts up to 142 years old. Even the bottles were hand-blown and individually named. This was the first time one has ever been opened (never mind emptied). And according to luckiest barman in the world -- who was gifted a glass of the spirit -- it's the "most beautiful thing" he'd ever tasted.

1. Through the Fire and Flames (Beer edition)
The most expensive beer in the world sold for $16,000 last year. It's only 70 years old, which might make it immature compared to its older brothers on this list, if it wasn't for the fact it survived the Hindenburg.

The flame-scorched-but-still-sealed bottle was found with five of its friends by a firefighter responding to disaster. He buried the bottles where he found them, returning to recover his booty when the fuss had died down. He gave four to friends, one to the original brewery, and took one for himself -- which his family auctioned for a giant cash prize last year.

It's the most expensive bottle of beer ever sold, and also the most pointless, because beer can't be saved that long -- even the warmest bottle of Natty Ice would be more drinkable. Though seven decades of skunked-beer rot would still taste better than Bud Light Lime.