Shipwreck champagne

Tasting Notes on 200-Year Old Champagne Salvaged From Baltic

Filed under: Wine

Remember the Finnish divers who recently discovered several crates of champagne and beer from a sunken ship that had been at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for nearly two centuries?

Well....turns out that it tasted pretty good.

The divers first discovered the champagne was drinkable when changing pressures caused the cork to pop off one of the bottles, and one diver decided to drink. He expected to taste seawater that had seeped into the bottle over the last 200 years, but was shocked to discover the wine still tasted fine.

The divers all had some of the ancient wine, and then resealed the wine and brought it to wine expert Ella Grussner Cromwell-Morgan. Here's how she described it: "Despite the fact that it was so amazingly old, there was a freshness to the wine. It wasn't debilitated in any way. Rather, it had a clear acidity which reinforced the sweetness. Finally, a very clear taste of having been stored in oak casks."

Tags: Aaland, Champagne, Shipwreck champagne