Dating / appraising unopened wine bottles discovered in prohibition cabinet!

[adamadams]

Hello all! I am new to this page and need help in dating / appraising some unopened wine bottles I recently inherited. Fun backstory: these bottles were discovered in a secret prohibition cabinet above our fireplace. We had no idea it existed! There's a couple dates visible, but the rest seem older and have no dates visible. The brands are Christian Brothers, Ernest & Julio Gallo, Blanchard, Lancers, Schloss Biebrich, and others.

I've attached photos of the bottles in question. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Click here for to see the Discovery video! We started documenting our renovation when we found the compartment. It's fun times. Thanks in advance!

 

[CanadianBottles]

Welcome to the forum! Unfortunately I don't think this is really the place to get info on wine appraisals. The value in that case comes from the contents rather than the bottles, which by themselves aren't really valuable. Date-wise they look like they're mostly from the 1970s or 80s (the Christian Brothers could be from the 60s but looks like it's been opened so I doubt it's drinkable). I don't think you can use the date codes on the bases (if there are any) to date wine since you can't be sure the bottle was made the same year as the wine and the value changes so much from year to year.

 

[SPC]

Hi. I would call a good auctioneer. I do not know about these makes but I have seen old whine in bottles sell for very high prices. sometimes thousands per bottle. I would do a little research on the auctioneer first though. You want to get one that Knows about wine.. Try googling auctioneer that sells wine. Try close by first & Then further away. Good luck, Stephen. P.S. make sure you keep the wine bottles lying down on their side so it keeps the cork's moist. I hope they were lying on their side when you found them. If not they may be no good. Tell the auctioneer if they were lying down when you found them.