Remember the shipwrecked champagne?

In July last year I reported that what may be the world's oldest champagne had been discovered in a shipwreck in the Baltic. Here's a video clip providing more details.

In November I reported that two of the bottles had been opened and tasted. Again, here's a video clip with more information.

Reuters reports that two of the surviving bottles will be auctioned in June.

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 [about US $81,850].

. . .

Erikson said he felt a bit guilty about drinking some of the champagne straight from the bottle.

"If I'd known it was worth so much, I would have at least poured it into a glass first," he said.

Aland, an autonomous region, is a duty free port, so the buyers will not have to pay any taxes, according to Bjorn Haggblom, head of communications for the government of Aland.

The government intends to use the auction's proceeds to fund maritime archaeological work and benefit the Baltic Sea environment.

There's more at the link.

I hope the buyer actually drinks them, instead of putting them away for posterity. Assuming they're standard-sized bottles, there's something awesome about the prospect of drinking champagne that costs almost $14,000 per glass, or a thousand bucks per sip!



Peter