This hooch is aged - really, really aged

How smooth is 100-year-old gin?

Really, really smooth.

That was the overwhelming consensus of about 100 people fascinated with history and hooch (not necessarily in that order) who attended a one-of-a-kind event Saturday at the Hennepin History Museum.

The event featured a sampling of long-hidden booze recently uncovered during the renovation of a home in Minneapolis.

In addition, a dozen bottles were auctioned off, with proceeds benefiting the museum. A 1919 bottle of Appetine Bitters, in "perfect condition," went for $1,025. A bottle of "near perfect" Johnnie Walker Special Old Highland Whisky, from 1907, went for $1,100. A James Buchanan Black and White Scotch Whisky, from 1906, in perfect condition, went for $775.

"It kills me that I'll never taste this," said Jada Hansen, the museum's executive director, her hands hovering over the whisky before it was auctioned off.

Still, she was "ecstatic" when homeowner Mary Shanesy came to her with news of what workers had uncovered.

Then one of them spotted moonshine-looking jugs and started hauling them out.

In the end, they counted 90 bottles, many of them in pristine shape. Gin, cognac, Scotch whiskey, Jamaican rum, French brandy, vermouth, even medicinal stomach bitters. Only one bottle -- a rare absinthe -- was broken.

Guests Saturday night were treated to samples of gin, brandy and whisky. Shanesy ceremoniously opened the first bottle of gin to great anticipation.

"We'll see if the cork makes it out of the bottle," she said. "No, it didn't. Think of it as roughage." Didn't matter. It was great.

"Very smooth," said Janet Kane, a friend of Shanesy's, who flew in from New Jersey for the event. "It doesn't have the juniper taste at all."

"The Johnnie Walker news," Hansen said, "went viral."

But it was Minneapolis native son Dean Phillips, of the Phillips Distilling Co., who successfully bid on the Walker and one other. "These are likely the only ones of their kind in the world," he said. "To keep them in the Twin Cities and protect them was my primary goal."

About 10 bottles will become the property of the museum.

Shirley Mack of Minneapolis came to the event because she loves "the history of the flappers, Prohibition." Hunter Goetzman, 25, was impressed with the perfect label on the Old Bushmills whiskey."

Before the Saturday event began, the three workers who found and reported the stash were honored at a private reception, during which Shanesy gave them each a jug from the discovery. "It wasn't so much generous as appropriate," Shanesy said of Noah Day and Trevor Ogilvie of Blue Construction Inc. and Mike Sullivan of Sayler Heating & Air. "All of this could have just disappeared. They are so excited for me."

Deciding that it would be bad press to poison guests paying up to $65 each for a chance to sample gin, brandy and whisky, Hansen decided "to make sure first that it's drinkable."

She and Shanesy, joined by three staff members, stepped into the museum's cozy Fireside Room last Thursday and opened up a bottle of the Tanager Dry Gin. "To Karl," they said.

"I'm not a gin drinker," Shanesy said, "but this stuff is fabulous. Every time I turn around, this is more fun."