Baltic Sea shipwreck champagne to be auctioned
Source: Agencies |
April 27, 2011, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
TWO bottles of champagne, thought to be about 200 years old and part of a cache of 150 salvaged from a 19th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, will be auctioned in Finland in June.
The cache, which belongs to the government of Aland, an archipelago in the Baltic, includes a bottle from the house of Veuve Clicquot and another from Juglar, which closed its doors in the early 19th century.
Acker Merrall & Condit, of New York, will auction the two bottles on June 3.
When the first bottle was recovered from the sunken two-masted schooner dating from about 1780-1830, Swedish champagne writer Richard Juhlin estimated it would fetch about 500,000 Swedish krona (US$82,000).
"We didn't know if it was going to be anything drinkable," Ella Grussner Cromwell-Morgan, a sommelier who lives on Aland, said about the first bottle.
Wine experts estimated from the corks and the hand-blown bottles that the wines were produced between 1811 and 1831. "Most likely they're older than that, because in those days they kept wine stored for 10-12 years in barrels before they shipped it," said Christian Erikson, the diver who discovered the cache.
Erikson, a friend of Cromwell-Morgan, brought the first bottle to her. "It tasted sweet, but it had that really crisp acidity that made it so balanced," she said of the Juglar.
Wine experts suggest the Baltic's steady 4 degrees Celsius temperature, the darkness and lying undisturbed 50 meters under water helped in the wines aging process.
The Aland government intends to use the auction's proceeds to fund maritime archeological work.
The cache, which belongs to the government of Aland, an archipelago in the Baltic, includes a bottle from the house of Veuve Clicquot and another from Juglar, which closed its doors in the early 19th century.
Acker Merrall & Condit, of New York, will auction the two bottles on June 3.
When the first bottle was recovered from the sunken two-masted schooner dating from about 1780-1830, Swedish champagne writer Richard Juhlin estimated it would fetch about 500,000 Swedish krona (US$82,000).
"We didn't know if it was going to be anything drinkable," Ella Grussner Cromwell-Morgan, a sommelier who lives on Aland, said about the first bottle.
Wine experts estimated from the corks and the hand-blown bottles that the wines were produced between 1811 and 1831. "Most likely they're older than that, because in those days they kept wine stored for 10-12 years in barrels before they shipped it," said Christian Erikson, the diver who discovered the cache.
Erikson, a friend of Cromwell-Morgan, brought the first bottle to her. "It tasted sweet, but it had that really crisp acidity that made it so balanced," she said of the Juglar.
Wine experts suggest the Baltic's steady 4 degrees Celsius temperature, the darkness and lying undisturbed 50 meters under water helped in the wines aging process.
The Aland government intends to use the auction's proceeds to fund maritime archeological work.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
