This ranch was where John Graves wrote his book; Good Bye To A River.
The owners said Graves had a vineyard and made his own wine at the ranch.
In the crawl space of one building, I found multiple cases of wine bottles which the bottles were stored on their side to keep the corks wet.
Rats and mice had chewed the corks until they dripped and most likely drank the wine.
I told the owners what I found and that all bottles were emptied. Said I could keep a bottle, but Graves did not put his name on any of the labels, so there was no providence.
Everything was left in place.
Good story.
I have been to the Inglenook Winery in NAPA many times and have gone into their “caves” to see the aging wines. They told us a story at one turn looking into a room that had stacked wines in it and the labels had fallen off from age we were told. They told us this room had been buried in a cave in and uncovered with expansion around 100 years later.
The claim now is that that isn’t true. But I saw the room and it was glassed off so we couldn’t get into it to protect the bottles on the racks that had more dust on them than a cowboy riding drag for a couple of days. And the bid on these bottles started at $6k a bottle. Inglenook denies this but they did have a bottle of 1941 Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon go at auction for $27K.
wy69
So nobody noticed a bunch of drunken mice or rats staggering around?
Grandma sent grandpa down to the cellar to clean out all the old homecanned fruit and juice jars. Grandpa brought over the neighbor to help. They had a fine time...