Man Stumbles Upon Prohibition-Era Bottles of Whiskey While Walking Dog on Beach

(Photos: Austin Contegiacomo/Reddit)

A man walking his dog on a New Jersey beach discovered 11 bottles of whiskey that appear to have been buried there during Prohibition.

The man, who has been identified as Austin Contegiacomo, 28, first posted his findings on Reddit in an effort to determine how old they were and what their value may be. The bottles were embossed with the words “Lincoln Inn” and a depiction of a man on a horse.

Lincoln Inn was produced by a company that later became the Canadian whisky brand Seagram’s, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to the Inquirer, bootleggers would ferry whiskey bottles from Canada to the U.S., and New Jersey was a popular destination due to its proximity to big cities like New Jersey and Philadelphia and relatively unpopulated ports.

Author, whiskey expert and New York Times writer Clay Risen mulled over the topic with the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“It would have to be an illegal operation where someone had to move really quickly,” he said. “When you’re moving whiskey in bulk packages like that, people tend to keep pretty good track of it.”

Contegiacomo split up most of the bottles among his Coast Guard co-workers, while saving one for himself and one for his dad. “I’d rather share them with those guys than keep 11 of them in my garage,” he told the Inquirer.

Nobody has tasted any of the whiskeys yet, but Contegiacomo told the Inquirer he’s willing to do so if someone else joins him.

Would the whiskey be any good, after all this time? Risen’s not so sure.

“I wouldn’t have a lot of hope that particular set of bottles would taste very good, Those are not prime storage conditions, under sand,” Risen told the Inquirer. Then again, he added, “Maybe that turns out to be a great place to store whiskey.”

The cloudier bottles of the bunch, though, we’re not so sure about.