The Dive
In the summer of 2010, a group of divers exploring the waters near Foglo in the Aland Islands — a Finnish archipelago between Sweden and Finland in the Baltic Sea — found a shipwreck on the seabed. Inside the wreck, among the debris of a 19th-century sailing vessel, they found bottles. A lot of bottles.
One hundred and forty-five champagne bottles, lying in the cold, dark water where they had rested for approximately 170 years.
The divers brought a few bottles to the surface. They opened one. And then they tasted something that no living person had ever tasted before: champagne from the 1840s.
The Tasting
What did 170-year-old shipwreck champagne taste like?
The wine was alive.
Not alive in the polite way that wine writers use the word — alive in the literal sense that it still had effervescence, flavor, and complexity after roughly 170 years at the bottom of the sea. The conditions had been perfect: near-freezing temperatures (around 4°C), complete darkness, constant pressure from the water above, and no UV light. The Baltic Sea had created the greatest wine cellar in the world by accident.
The tasting notes were unlike anything in the wine vocabulary. Richard Juhlin, one of the world’s foremost champagne experts, described the wine in terms that abandoned conventional wine language entirely: “flowers that don’t exist here… like a forest on another planet.”
The champagne was identified as Veuve Clicquot, dating to approximately 1839-1841. Other bottles in the wreck were identified as Juglar (a house that no longer exists) and Heidsieck. The Veuve Clicquot bottles were in the best condition — the Widow’s innovations in riddling and clarity had, it turned out, also created wines with extraordinary aging potential.
The Science
How sweet was champagne in the 1800s compared to today?
Researchers from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne analyzed the wine in detail. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that 19th-century champagne was fundamentally different from what we drink today.
The sugar content was far higher — approximately 150 grams per liter, compared to the 6-12 grams per liter in modern brut champagne. This would classify the wine as extremely sweet by today’s standards, closer to a dessert wine than a dinner wine. The 19th-century palate, it turned out, preferred champagne that was almost syrupy.
The wine also contained traces of metals — iron, copper, gold — that came from winemaking equipment of the era. These trace elements actually contributed to the wine’s preservation and may have played a role in its extraordinary longevity.
The effervescence had diminished but not disappeared. After 170 years, the carbon dioxide was still detectable — faint bubbles rising through wine that had outlived the people who made it, the people who shipped it, and the vessel that carried it.
The Ship
The ship’s identity was never conclusively established. Based on the cargo and the route — the Aland Islands sit on the maritime corridor between France and Russia — researchers believe the vessel was carrying champagne to the Russian imperial court, which was by far the largest champagne market in the world during the 1840s.
This timing places the shipment during the peak of Veuve Clicquot’s dominance of the Russian market. The Widow herself had died in 1866, but in the 1840s, her house was sending enormous quantities of champagne to St. Petersburg, where the Russian aristocracy’s appetite for French luxury was essentially unlimited.
The ship appears to have sunk in relatively shallow water — deep enough for preservation but shallow enough for recreational divers to reach. Whether it hit a reef, encountered a storm, or suffered some other catastrophe is unknown. What matters is that its cargo arrived at its destination 170 years late, and in better condition than anyone had a right to expect.
The Auction
How much did the shipwreck champagne sell for at auction?
In 2011, the Aland government — which had claimed ownership of the wreck and its contents — auctioned two bottles at the Hotel Mariehamn in the Aland Islands. The first bottle, a Veuve Clicquot, sold for 30,000 euros — a world record for champagne at auction at the time.
The buyer was a restaurant, not a collector, which meant the wine would eventually be opened and served. The remaining bottles were divided between the Aland government (for preservation and future sales) and scientific institutions (for research).
A few bottles have been opened at controlled tasting events over the years. Every account describes the same phenomenon: initial shock that the wine is drinkable at all, followed by gradually escalating astonishment as the complexity reveals itself. The flavors — honey, tobacco, wet limestone, something floral that defies comparison — are unlike any champagne that exists today, because no champagne today has been aged for 170 years at the bottom of the sea.
Why It Survived
Why did champagne survive 170 years underwater in the Baltic Sea?
The Baltic Sea is uniquely suited to wine preservation. Its low salinity (the Baltic is the world’s largest body of brackish water), near-freezing temperatures, and limited light penetration create conditions that approximate a perfect wine cellar — but better, because the pressure is higher and more consistent than any human-built storage.
The bottles were lying on their sides, keeping the corks moist and the seals intact. The water pressure actually helped — it counteracted the internal pressure of the champagne, reducing the stress on the corks and preventing gas escape.
The result was accidental genius: a storage environment that no winemaker could have designed, preserving wine that no winemaker expected to last more than a few years. The Widow Clicquot, who invented riddling to make her wine clearer and more stable, had inadvertently created a product robust enough to survive nearly two centuries underwater.
The Aland Islands
The Aland Islands are an autonomous, Swedish-speaking archipelago of 6,700 islands belonging to Finland. They’re accessible by ferry from both Stockholm (5-6 hours) and Turku, Finland (5-6 hours), and by air from Helsinki or Stockholm.
The Aland Maritime Museum in Mariehamn — the capital — tells the story of the shipwreck and displays artifacts from the discovery. The museum occasionally hosts tastings of the shipwreck champagne, though these events are rare and tickets are expensive.
The islands themselves are quiet, beautiful, and largely unknown to international tourists. In summer, the archipelago is a cycling destination — flat terrain, minimal traffic, and landscapes that look like a Scandinavian postcard. The contrast between the islands’ modest present and the extraordinary discovery beneath their waters is part of the appeal.
If you’re visiting, the Viking Line and Tallink Silja ferries between Stockholm and Helsinki stop at Mariehamn. The ferry route passes directly over the approximate location of the wreck — meaning you can drink champagne on deck while floating above 170-year-old champagne on the seabed. The irony would not be lost on the Widow.
Finland’s relationship with champagne doesn’t end at the seabed. In Helsinki, IISI Vallisaari operates a wine restaurant on a fortress island in the archipelago — open only 150 days a year, accessible only by boat, with the same kind of Nordic-maritime-meets-fine-wine contrast that makes the Aland discovery feel less like a coincidence and more like a pattern.
FAQ
Where was the oldest champagne found?
The oldest drinkable champagne ever discovered was found in a shipwreck near Foglo in the Aland Islands, a Finnish archipelago in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. Divers exploring the wreck in the summer of 2010 found 145 bottles, identified as Veuve Clicquot, Juglar, and Heidsieck, dating to approximately 1839-1841. The near-freezing temperatures, darkness, and constant pressure of the Baltic seabed had created perfect storage conditions by accident.
How old was the Baltic shipwreck champagne?
The champagne was approximately 170 years old when discovered in 2010, dating to the 1839-1841 period. The ship was likely carrying the bottles to the Russian imperial court, which was the world’s largest champagne market in the 1840s. Researchers from the University of Reims confirmed the wine was fundamentally different from modern champagne — far sweeter at about 150 grams of sugar per liter, compared to 6-12 grams in today’s brut.
What did 170-year-old champagne taste like?
Champagne expert Richard Juhlin described the wine in terms that abandoned conventional tasting language entirely: “flowers that don’t exist here… like a forest on another planet.” Other tasters reported honey, tobacco, wet limestone, and something floral that defies comparison. The wine still had faint effervescence after nearly two centuries underwater. Every tasting account follows the same pattern: initial shock that the wine is drinkable at all, followed by escalating astonishment as the complexity reveals itself.
How much did the shipwreck champagne sell for?
The first bottle auctioned — a Veuve Clicquot — sold for 30,000 euros at the Hotel Mariehamn in the Aland Islands in 2011, setting a world record for champagne at auction at the time. The buyer was a restaurant, not a collector, meaning the wine would eventually be served. The remaining bottles were split between the Aland government for preservation and future sales, and scientific institutions for research.
Can you visit the Aland Islands maritime museum?
Yes. The Aland Maritime Museum in Mariehamn — the archipelago’s capital — tells the story of the shipwreck and displays artifacts from the discovery. The museum occasionally hosts tastings of the shipwreck champagne, though these events are rare and tickets are expensive. Getting there is easy: Viking Line and Tallink Silja ferries between Stockholm and Helsinki stop at Mariehamn. The ferry route passes directly over the approximate wreck location.
The Baltic shipwreck champagne is one of 12 moments champagne changed history. The woman who made the wine — Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin — is the subject of The Widow Who Smuggled Champagne in Coffee Barrels. The full 5,000-year story is in The Complete History of Champagne.
Sources: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — “Chemical Composition of 170-Year-Old Champagne” (Philippe Jeandet et al., 2015), Smithsonian Magazine — “What Does 170-Year-Old Champagne Taste Like?”, Aland Maritime Museum — Shipwreck Exhibition Records, Richard Juhlin — Champagne Expert Tasting Notes and Documentation, Wine Spectator — “Record-Setting Shipwreck Champagne Auction in Aland Islands”. Discover more hidden champagne experiences or explore the Champagne Odyssey trail.
