What does an unopened bottle of liquor mean?
Is it a party waiting to happen, or a quiet moment of reflection? Is it the potential for two people to share commonalities or is it trouble in a bottle?
A few old, unopened liquor bottles, some going back to the 1980s, found their way to downtown Amherst recently, and each one represents a life well-lived. The paper edges of the labels are showing their age, but each bottle holds more than the amber rum or champagne inside. Each one represents a story.
“I wish I knew where she got some of them,” travel agent Teresa Gogan said looking at the bottles that now reside on the windowsill of the Travel Store’s Amherst branch.
‘She’ was Linda Larsen, a respected Prince Edward Island travel agent whose career brought her under the same umbrella as Gogan. Unmarried, when Larsen passed away the well-traveled bottles came into the possession of her sister, Marie Jenkins of Oxford. In time, the Jenkins gifted the bottles to Gogan, each one representing a chapter in Larsen’s life, and now a source of wonder to Gogan and her clients.
Picking up the bottles one by one, Gogan muses at their probable past and clues connecting them to a different time.
“Things like this bottle of rum that came from Jamaica, it’s probably 25 to 30 years old… it’s possible a client brought it back to her from Jamaica, or she went to a Jamaica tourist board,” Gogan said before picking up a smaller bottle. “And things like this, it’s glass. You don’t get glass bottles on an airplane anymore. This came from Bermuda.”
Another bottle carries the name of Eastern Provincial Airways, who merged with Canadian Pacific Airlines in 1986 before becoming part of Canadian Airlines, now property of Air Canada.
When it comes to vintage liquor, many traditionally turn to aged scotch, whiskey or rare wine. There is, however, a significant market for both the rare and obscure liquors of days gone by. One such online retailer, www.oldliquors.com, brokers everything from dry gin from the 1950s and familiar rum like Captain Morgan from the 1980s to whiskey before the advent of electricity and modern medicine for hundred to tens-of-thousands of dollars.
Gogan, however, looks at her new collection as something more than a monetary blessing. It’s a connection between her, her clients and their loved one who shared a similar career as Gogan. That, she says, is priceless.
“I think it’s fascinating,” Gogan said. “I’ve brought home alcohol from different places, but that’s what I’m trying to get – the story behind those bottles.”
With the exception of Africa and Russia, Gogan has had the opportunities to travel to almost everywhere in the world during her career. The stories and adventures that come from those travels can sometimes become intertwined with something as simple as a postcard, a fridge magnet or a small sample of the local spirits. It’s not the contents that matter but, instead, the context and in this setting, it evident it’s not what is in the bottle that matters, but the adventure and mysteries of life that can’t be so easily corked.
