200-Year Old Champagne Lifted From Baltic Shipwreck

by David Kiley (RSS feed)
Sep 2nd 2010 at 8:51AM

Divers are recovering bottles of Champagne that have been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two centuries, according to European news reports.

About 70 bottles, some of which from the no-longer-operating House of Juglar, lie mostly undamaged in 164 feet of water south of the Aland Islands.

The first bottle was brought to the surface in mid-July.
The cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. Based on assertions made by some historians, it could have been en route to the Russian Imperial Court from France's King Louis XVI.

Some of the bottles already retrieved had some cracks and a few corks on the bottles had corroded, leaving the possibility open that salt water leaked into some bottles.
The island chain is at the entrance of the Gulf of Bothnia, in the Baltic Sea, and is part of Finland. The islands form an archipelago of more than 6,000 islands.

The trove as discovered in July. At first, because some of the in-tact labels had an anchor on them, it was believed the Champagne had come from Veuve Clicquot. But since then, the source of the bottles has centered on Juglar.

Tags: Champagne shipwreck, Juglar, King Louis XVI, Veuve Clicquot