Divers find vintage champagne
30 bottles of champagne thought to pre-date back to the French Revolution have been found by divers on the Baltic seabed.
Diver Christian Ekstrom was exploring a shipwreck when he discovered the bottles. On retrieving a bottle he took it to the surface and tasted it with his fellow colleagues, he stated “it had a very sweet taste, you could taste oak and it had a very strong tobacco smell. And there were very small bubbles”.
Upon examination by experts it is thought to have been produced in the 18th century due to the shape of the bottle. The wine is believed to have been made by Clicquot, now Veuve Clicquot, between 1782 and 1788. It had been kept in such good condition due to the dark, cold conditions on the seabed.
Champagne thought to pre-date the French Revolution have been found by divers on the Baltic seabed If these bottles are as the experts predict, it would make them 40 years older than the current record holder, an 1825 bottle of Perrier-Jouet. They predict that each bottle could fetch up to 500,000 Swedish kronor, approximately £45,000 at auction.
As the bottles were found off the coast of Aaland, an autonomous part of Finland it will be up to the local authorities to decide what is done with the shipwreck and the champagne.