New York Couple Find Whiskey Lined Walls When Doing Home Repairs

Patrick Bakker and Nick Drummond were often told their home in the Village of Ames, NY was owned by a local bootlegger. They always laughed the story off as just local legends, until recently when they found several bottles of whiskey dating back to 1923 while doing repairs on their home.

View this post on Instagram

The packaging for these bottles is amazing ❤️❤️❤️ This is one of the full ones! #bootleggers #prohibitionera #prohibition #oldwhisky #renovation #discovery #secretdoor #secretcompartment #americanfoursquare #smuggler #oldbooze

A post shared by Nick Drummond (@bootleggerbungalow) on Oct 12, 2020 at 1:33pm PDT

About a week ago, Nick was repairing the trim in a mudroom at the back of the house. After removing a board from the foundation to install insulation, he found that the slab he pried off had a bottom, which is not normal, because that's typical of a wall, not a crawlspace.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

  The flat head screws beneath the floor are rusted in place, but we were able to get a board off that was covering the side of the joist bay, where the hatch was. More packages! #secretdoor #whatsinside #secretcompartment #historicpreservation #prohibition #renovation #bootleggerbungalow   A post shared by Nick Drummond (@bootleggerbungalow) on Oct 11, 2020 at 5:59am PDT

“I didn’t think much of it and kept prying them off,” Drummond said, “And then, the first package fell out and I didn’t know exactly what it was.” The simple renovation turned into excavation, with the couple finding seven bundles of 100-year-old whiskey. All of the packages were perfectly sized for the wall. Each package was wrapped in tattered brown paper and tied with string, and had six bottles of whiskey within them. Every bottle was wrapped in straw and paper, and the label read “Old Smuggler” Gaelic Whiskey of the Stirling Bonding Company.

OUR WALLS ARE BUILT OF BOOZE! I can’t believe the rumors are true! He was actually a bootlegger! I mean I thought it was a cute story, but the builder of our house was ACTUALLY a bootlegger! #bootleggers #prohibition #historicpreservation #bootleggerbungalow #secretcompartment

A post shared by Nick Drummond (@bootleggerbungalow) on Oct 9, 2020 at 9:30am PDT

The bottles were dated October 23rd, 1923. A back label said the drink was “a high degree of purity,” as well as “excellent quality and flavour," and “maturity.”

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

This is too cool! It looks like these all date to the 1920s! #bootleggerbungalow #secretcompartment #hiddentreasures #historicpreservation A post shared by Nick Drummond (@bootleggerbungalow) on Oct 9, 2020 at 9:32am PDT

The two hope to taste the liquor some day.

A bottle of Gaelic "Old Smuggler" recently sold at a Whiskey Auction for about $670. It sounds like these guys have about $28,140 of whiskey if they played their cards right.

Read more at Daily Gazette