ALTA, Utah — A few weeks ago, FOX 13 News told you about a 150-year-old bottle of alcohol discovered in the historic mining town of Alta.
The unopened bottle, which was found over the summer, is the only one ever known to exist. So, State officials brought the historic find to Isaac Winter and Tara Lindley at High West Distillery for analysis.
There is now an update to share:
"The lab results are really exciting,” Winter said. "We saw a couple of esters that would suggest that the base was apples.”
Yes, that’s right — 150 years ago, Utahns were drinking some sort of alcoholic apple fermented cider up at Alta.
WATCH: 150+ year old bottle of Utah alcohol opened, studied by archeologists and distillers
Winter described the taste as similar to an old, dry cider for those “unfamiliar” with 150-year-old mystery drink.
The pair used multiple methods to analyze the contents, including sending samples of the bottle to multiple labs and companies to create a complete picture.
"It's fun to see that — that link in the history to actually have a piece in it where we have data, we've tasted it and we lived, and now we have analytical results," Lindley said.
As for what comes next in the science of alcohol and apple mystery liquid, here’s what they say about what comes next in the science that will follow:
"While the first round of aromatic ester results point towards an apple-derived liquid, we will be sending out samples to third party labs for a handful of analyses to help us learn more about this mystery liquid.
"First, we would like to confirm the ABV (alcohol by volume). We know it's low ABV but it will be helpful to quantify it so we might have an idea of how much sugar was available for fermentation and what that source could reasonably be.
"We will also have a sugar panel run that will tell us if any sugar remained after fermentation stopped and what type of sugar(s) is/are present, if any at all. A specific sugar alcohol, sorbitol would be an indicator of an apple-derived liquid. We've requested an acid panel as well to determine if malic and/or lactic acids are present to confirm apple derivation.
"We can learn more about the fermentation and flavor elements by looking at higher alcohols. We hope to be able to send volume out for isotopic testing to confirm the source of carbon isotopes in the liquid."
One of the big hopes is to not only study this, but to recreate it as well — and the team is well on their way to doing that.
"Exploring different options to work with labs on plating this out. There's probably a whole mess of different microbes in there — bacteria, yeast," Winter said. "We need it to, you know, be able to eat sugar and create alcohol and CO2. We also want it to taste good at the end of the day.”
This bottle wasn’t the only thing found at Alta. Several other bottles, pipes, spurs, and other artifacts, including a hat, were found buried next to this bottle.
The State Historic Preservation Office will host an open house on Feb. 19 at the North Capitol Building, where the public can view the bottle and other artifacts found at Alta.
Registration is required for the event, which can be found HERE.
Ultimately, this is one of those finds that is just once in a lifetime, according to the team working on it.
"Tara and I were just, we were slapping high-fives the whole time," Winter said. "This has been like an absolute once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
"Honestly, I don't think I realized how impactful this would be, and meaningful," Lindley added. "Now we're starting to understand at least ... one of the things that people were drinking in this area back then.”
