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Diver Discovers World's Oldest Drinkable Champagne

The bottles, whose shape suggests production before the French Revolution, were still in good condition, and are now on their way to France for analysis.The champagne was perfectly preserved due to the seabed’s dark, cold conditions. If confirmed, the discovery would be the world’s oldest drinkable champagne.

Diver Christian Ekstrom was exploring a shipwreck on the Baltic seabed when he discovered the bottles, one of which he took to the surface to open and taste with his associates.  "It was fantastic," Ekstrom said during an interview with Reuters. "It had a very sweet taste, you could taste oak and it had a very strong tobacco smell. And there were very small bubbles."

According to records, production of Clicquot champagne began in 1772, but was disrupted after the French Revolution in 1789.  If the bottles were indeed produced in the 1780s, the champagne would be approximately four decades older than the current record-holder for oldest bottle of champagne -- a bottle of Perrier-Jouet from 1825.  Wine experts estimate that each bottle of the newly discovered champagne would sell for around $69,000.  Ekstrom found the bottles in water off the coast of Aaland, Finland. Local authorities there will now decide what will be done with the champagne, and the shipwreck.

Uncorked: Prosecco, an Italian sparking wine:

The everyday champagne Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine made from the prosecco grape, came of age in America in 2008, when it was incorporated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Prosecco is made and grown in the northeast section of the top of the boot of Italy. In our local grocery and wine stores, it most often shares a shelf with champagne. It is bottled similarly to champagne, causing most Americans to treat it as a celebratory drink, to be served on special occasions.

In Italy, however, it is an everyday drink. Restaurants often bring out complimentary glasses when diners are first seated. It is a very versatile wine; in Italy it is not served just as an aperitivo,but throughout the course of the meal, or in the late afternoon as an ombrette,a little pick-me-up.  Particularly infuriating to Europeans is the American habit of calling any wine that sparkles “champagne.” True champagne comes only from the legally recognized region of Champagne in France, and true Prosecco comes only from the Veneto in Italy.  It may be purely cultural, but Italians do not view Prosecco with the same intensity the French view their champagne. Prosecco is a fun, uncomplicated beverage, considerably less expensive than true champagne because it is made with less labor-intensive methods. Prosecco goes through a second fermentation in stainless steel vats and is infused with carbon dioxide to make it bubble. It is meant for consumption shortly after release, unlike vintage champagne.

Myth Buster: Dom Pérignon and Champagne
Go figure, the English helped invent something tasty.

On this day in 1693, a modest Benedictine monk named Dom Pérignon succeeded with a second fermentation, resulting an exciting, fizzy wine. "Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!" he said as he took his first sip.  Well, as it turns out, that was just some great advertising a few centuries later. Although Dom the man did have quite the talent for growing high-quality grapes and blending wines across vineyards and vintages, the discovery of sparkling wine wasn't his. It was actually a long evolutionary process across borders, with the British providing some of the greatest contributions: In the mid-17th century, importers of still wine from France's Champagne region were adding sugar to cause a second fermentation--and create that now-famous fizz.  But since we love the legend of what supposedly occurred on this date four centuries ago, not to mention the wine itself, Dom Pérignon is our Wine of the Week.   True, a bottle of Dom will normally set you back $150, but in recent months plenty of web sites such as Gilt, Rue La La, Cinderella, Wine.Woot and Winery Insider have offered Dom and other high-end Champagnes for significantly less. And let's face it, Dom gives us something to aspire to when we're drinking $15 sparklers from other parts of the world. 

Stay tuned for more Champagne News and Trends.
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