Dozens of Prohibition-era alcohol bottles discovered in walls and floors of New York home
Owners were told their 100-year-old home was built by a notorious bootlegger
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Your support makes all the difference.A New York couple has discovered more than 66 bottles of whiskey from the Prohibition-era hidden within the walls and floorboards of their home.
Nick Drummond and Patrick Bakker said they were told their more than 100-year-old home in Ames, New York, was built by a notorious bootlegger but thought it was a myth.
However, during a recent home renovation in October, the couple made a surprise discovery when removing outside skirting along the bottom of the mudroom attached to the house.
"Our walls are filled with bundles of booze!" Mr Drummond, a designer and historic preservationist, wrote on his Instagram, where he had been documenting the home renovation.
Mr Drummond told CNN of the moment of discovery when he opened the outside skirting and was greeted with a mysterious package.
"I'm like what is that? I'm very confused," he said. "I'm looking and there's hay everywhere, there's paper, and glass ... I see another package and it's this whiskey bottle."
The bottles, which were wrapped in straw, were of the brand of Scottish whiskey labeled Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey.
“I'm like holy crap. This is like a whiskey stash. And this is like, all of a sudden, the whole story of the bootlegger,” Mr Drummond said.
The couple proceeded to find more bottles of the smuggled liquor under their floorboards in the mud room after crawling inside a hidden compartment in the floor and prying open a joist bay.
“There’s whiskey under the floors too!,” he said in a post.
Mr Drummond told CNN that they are still finding more bottles within the house.
"Initially we found seven bundles of six in the wall and then at that point we found four more bundles and actually funny enough as of less than a week ago we just found more," he said.
After researching the house Mr Drummond said he discovered it belonged to a German man known as Count Adolph Humpfner, who died suddenly in 2932 leaving a large fortune, and previously “known as the mystery man of the Mohawk Valley.”
On the couple’s aptly named “Bootlegger Bungalow” Facebook page the pair said on Wednesday that they had “begun cataloging the booze."
“Out of the initial bottles found, about 13 are full. But 4 of those have tops in rough-ish condition, so I’d say probably 9 ‘good’ bottles,” Mr Drummond posted.
“To everyone asking if we have tried it, we haven’t! But we will!,” they added.
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