It turns out that the
world's oldest Champagne
is also one of the world's most recognizable. Veuve Clicquot, the "old widow,"
has claimed the three of the bottles of Champagne
that were found on a sunken ship in July as their own.
Though the labels were
absent, the branding on the corks, which depicted a comet streaking through the
skies in 1811 and was attributed with blessing a harvest, portrayed their true
identity. The bottles were believed to be from the 1780s, but experts now believe
them to be from the early 19th century-still making them the oldest
in the world.
How do we know its
drinkable? The divers tried a bottle, of course. "It tasted fantastic," said
diving instructor Christian Ekstrom. "It was very sweet Champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak."
This sweetness was a trend at the time. Russians were known to sweeten Champagne even more by
adding a spoonful of sugar.
chosen few were invited to Mariehamn, Finland
to taste the wines (both the Veuve Clicquot and the other bottles, which were
identified as Juglar, a now defunct house) this past Wednesday and agree with
those tasting notes. Though the wine had gone flat, flavors of chanterelles,
honey, orange and peach were still present in the Juglar while the Veuve showed
linden blossoms and lime peels. The
wines were so well preserved because the Baltic Sea
is actually an ideal place to store wine. The temperature is consistently
around 41 degrees, there is no light and the pressure is similar to the
pressure inside the bottle. There are plans for some of the bottles to be sold
by the Aland government, the current owners of the bottles at auction where
they could fetch more that $70,000 each. Some bottles may be mixed with newer Champagne to make a new
blend. The government plans on holding on to five bottles as archaeological
So the next time you're going to store a bottle of bubbly, consider
the Baltic Sea over that fancy wine shop. It
could earn you a few bucks in a couple hundred years.