Médoc estate Château Tour Castillon are going to immerse some of their 2015 wines in the English Channel.
Château Tour Castillon wine to be aged in English Channel
The château is owned by the Peyruse family, who spent many holidays in Brittany, on the edge of the Channel.
‘The idea came from my childhood friend, Johann Boché, a diving instructor,’ Laure Peyruse told Decanter.com.
‘And as we have friends who are fishermen and divers in common, it was easy to organise the immersion.
‘After some research, we saw that no wine grower of the Médoc had done this, so it was a beautiful opportunity for us to try it exclusively.’
The bottles to be submerged. Credit: Tour Castillon
According to a statement from the château, submerging the wines in the Channel will allow for a gradual ageing process.
‘The Channel is a real energy source with temperature and pressure conditions, which can be really interesting thanks to the Gulf Stream flow.
‘The wine under the sea is in obscurity and in perfect humidity conditions. Moreover, the sea’s pressure is superior to a classic cellar.’
The bottles were submerged on 2 June and will stay there for a year, with regular surveillance from Boché and his team of divers.
There will be 600 bottles altogether, according to Peyruse.
Ageing in water
Other wineries have experimented with ageing wines in water:
Veuve Cliquot aged some Champagne in the Baltic Sea in 2014.
Larrivet Haut-Brion, in Pessac-Leognan, aged one barrel partially submerged in the sea.
