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Waldo Jaquith via Flickr
Bubbly Bounty

Bubbly underwater divers find world's oldest champagne

Swedish deep sea divers find something to celebrate.

A GROUP OF SWEDISH divers exploring a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea have found what they believe is the world’s oldest drinkable champagne.

The divers discovered bottles of a Veuve Clicquot champagne dating from the late 18th century, which they reckon dates from between 1772 and 1785.

If the dates prove accurate, the champagne would predate the current record holder – the Perrier-Jouet vineyard which has two bottles dating from 1825 – by up to 50 years or more.

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

Ekstrom added that the champagne had been found on the divers’ first search of the sunken cargo vessel, which they suggest was bound for St Petersburg – then the capital of Russia – when it went under.

Because they found the bottles first time around, they believe there could be more down there.

To reward themselves for their find, the divers opened a bottle and sampled the contents.

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

But with the bottles being potentially worth over €50,000 each, the chances are they may not be so keen to taste the contents of any future findings.