When the contractor on her stately 110-year-old Minneapolis home called two weeks ago, Mary Shanesy steeled herself for the worst. "The most amazing thing I've seen in 10 years in construction happened at your house today," said Noah Day of Blue Construction Inc.
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Hidden inside a knee wall on the third floor, an air-conditioning worker had struck gold. Amid the duct work, he found four cases, 15 jugs and 30 bottles of liquor, including gin, cognac, Scotch whiskey, Jamaican rum, French brandy, vermouth, even medicinal stomach bitters, some wrapped in straw, behind a small bead-board door.
A recent stash? Hardly.
Several bottles carried a sticker indicating the buyer paid the liquor tax of 1919 -- one year before Prohibition. While some labels are no longer identifiable, others are positively pristine, including those from Martini e Rossi, James Buchanan, John Walker & Sons and John Dewar & Sons.
http://www.startribune.com/local/102311279.html
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Hidden inside a knee wall on the third floor, an air-conditioning worker had struck gold. Amid the duct work, he found four cases, 15 jugs and 30 bottles of liquor, including gin, cognac, Scotch whiskey, Jamaican rum, French brandy, vermouth, even medicinal stomach bitters, some wrapped in straw, behind a small bead-board door.
A recent stash? Hardly.
Several bottles carried a sticker indicating the buyer paid the liquor tax of 1919 -- one year before Prohibition. While some labels are no longer identifiable, others are positively pristine, including those from Martini e Rossi, James Buchanan, John Walker & Sons and John Dewar & Sons.
http://www.startribune.com/local/102311279.html