Decanter World Wine AwardsShipwreck Champagne to be auctioned
- Tuesday 15 May 2012
Four bottles of Veuve Clicquot, six bottles from the now-defunct Champagne house Juglar, and one Heidsieck & Co go under the hammer at Mariehamn on 8 June.
Mariehamn is the capital of the autonomous Åland archipelago between Finland and Sweden, near where the bottles were found in 2010 in a wrecked schooner dating from 1825-30.
At the time the Åland government said it would run a yearly auction of bottles from the 168-strong cache, as a tourist attraction.
The first auction, held in the same place by Acker Merrall and Condit, sold a bottle identified as Veuve Clicquot for €30,000 (£26,700).
Finnish Champagne expert Essi Avellan MW tasted some of the wines from the wreck and found them ‘very much alive and remarkably fresh. As expected they were sweet in style, with a surprisingly bright, golden colour and honeyed, toasty and farmyardy aromatics.’
Next month’s auction, entitled Aland's Champagne Rendezvous. is to be held by French house Artcurial. Each of the 11 bottles has an estimate of €10,000 to €15,000.
Have your say!
Colin Burbidge
May 20 08:11
I believe someone in Chile has experiemnted with storage of wine under water. No reason why it shouldn't work. Does this mean we all need to flood our cellars and get a frog suit?
Andrew Paterson
May 17 12:37
It is interesting that the wines are so well preserved.
They would have stayed at a fairly constant temperature, close to the ideal I suppose, for that time.
Also, the fact that the environment outside of the bottle was liquid and at slightly higher than normal atmospheric pressure would reduce the effect of those forces that normally work to reduce and oxidise the content of wine bottles.
Some day all wine bottles will be stored in liquid (not salty water!) at controlled pressure and temperature.
Open the wine cellar with care...