It sometimes feels like wine has a habit of falling to the briny deep. On July 23, Polish wreck diver and underwater photographer Tomasz Stachura announced that he and his Baltictech team had discovered the wreck of a 19th-century sailing ship near Öland, an island off the coast of Sweden, and it was crammed with bottles of Champagne and mineral water.
“I have been diving for 40 years, and it often happens that there is one bottle or two … but to discover a wreck with so much cargo, it’s a first for me,” Stachura said in a statement sent to Wine Spectator.
Indeed, a fair amount of serendipity led to the find: “We were just checking out new spots, which I had been [researching] for years, out of pure curiosity,” said Stachura, who noted that the wreck looked like a regular fishing boat on his echosounder. “We did not expect it to be anything significant, and even hesitated for a moment whether to dive at all.” But divers Marek Cacaj and Pawel Truszynski did dive in and, over the course of two hours, confirmed this wreck was packing bubbly.
Per Stachura, the divers counted more than 100 bottles of Champagne and mineral water, but there may very well be more down there: “There was so much of it that it was difficult for us to estimate the quantities,” Stachura said in a Facebook post announcing the discovery.
Figuring Out the Age and Origin of the Bottles
Mineral water enthusiasts may be happy to know that it was the H2O that provided more detail about the shipwreck. The water is sealed in ceramic bottles stamped with the logo of still-operating brand Selters. With the help of historians, Stachura et al. used those stamps to determine that the ship dates from between 1850 and 1867. For further detail, the team contacted the also-still-operating ceramic factory that made the bottles.
So who made the Champagne? And where was it headed? In a follow-up Facebook post, Stachura revealed a royal twist to this tale: The wine might be Louis Roederer Champagne that was en route to the Imperial Russian court. Louis Roederer was beloved in Russia in the 19th century, and, beginning in 1876, the Champagne house even started making a new cuvée, Cristal, specifically for Alexander II, Emperor of Russia. (Per Stachura, Alexander expected this wine to be “twice as sweet as the standard.”)
Royal or not, there’s no word yet on whether the Champagne is definitely safe to drink. But who knows? After all, this bubbly is far from the oldest vino you could potentially sample.
As they continue to study their find, the Baltictech team is in contact with the Maritime Archaeological Research Institute of Sweden’s Södertörn University, and its director, professor Johan Rönnby. But there are “administrative restrictions” to consider before bringing up any Champagne bottles from the wreck. “It had been lying there for 170 years, so let it lie there for one more year, and we will have time to better prepare for the operation,” Stachura explained.
Nonetheless, Stachura and his team (which also includes Michal Iwicki, Maciej Honc and Paweł Wilk) will try to offer more details at the 2024 Baltictech Conference, which will bring together technical divers from across the globe this November.
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