IT’S probably undrinkable and the liquid inside the sealed bottle appears a bit hungover itself, but a 150-year-old bottle of beer is set to be the centre of attention when a new visitor centre opens in Glasgow next week.
The bottle of stout was found near where the ill-fated clipper The Light of The Age foundered near Melbourne in January 1868 on a voyage from Liverpool.
Diver Jim Anderson made the discovery in the 1970s and noticed a Wellpark Brewery stamp.
He eventually contacted the brewery and has now brought the bottle back to Glasgow, where it will feature in a new £1 million visitor centre built to tell the story of Tennent’s Lager.
The stout pre-dates Tennent’s Lager but was made in the Wellpark Brewery that created the famous Scottish drink.
At the time, Wellpark was the biggest exporter of bottled beer in the world and the shipwrecked bottle is thought to be one of the oldest in Britain.
Anderson, 72, has travelled to Scotland with his wife Jan for the opening of the Tennent’s Visitor Centre next Thursday, November 22.
He said: “I found it on a dive in the 1970s, photographed it and put it in my basement along with other things I’d salvaged from wrecks from those days. It was there for years, and I found the old photographs when I was looking through an old book earlier this year.
“I could see the inscription Wellpark Brewery on it, and I set about finding where that was. I found out it was in Glasgow, and I contacted Tennent’s to see if they were interested in the bottle, which they were, and I was delighted.
“It took a bit of clearance to get it to Glasgow because artefacts are protected in Australia and we need special authorisation for things like this to leave the country.
“I sought all that, and it’s amazing to see it back where it started, 150 years later, metres from where it started its journey.”
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