Divers find oldest champagne in Baltic wreck

Gap-fill exercise

A group of divers exploring a shipwreck the Baltic Sea have found bottles containing what is thought to be oldest drinkable champagne in the world, made in the late 18th century.

"I picked one champagne bottle just so could find the age of the wreck, because we didn't find name or any details that would have told us the name of the ship," diver Christian Ekstrom.

Mr Ekstrom and his Swedish diving colleagues opened the bottle and tasted contents.

"It was fantastic... it a very sweet taste, you could taste oak and it had a very strong tobacco smell. And there were very small bubbles," he said.

"We are 98 per cent sure it is Veuve Clicquot champagne and that it was probably [made] between 1772 [the year the business was established] and 1785," Mr Ekstrom said.
The current title of the world's champagne is held by Perrier-Jouet, which has two bottles from 1825.

Because the wreck lies off Aland, an autonomous part Finland, the local authorities will decide what will be done with the wreck and the champagne.