Deep Sea Divers Uncork 220-Year-Old Champagne [pic]

Sunken treasure — deep sea divers strike it rich in liquid gold.

1780 was a very good year for Eastern European champagne. ABC News reports that divers in the Baltic Sea discovered bottles of tiiiiiiiny bubbles in a sunken treasure, providing a pleasant buzz on open water. (We do love a good treasure hunt, preferably Goonies style.) That’s right, a case full of liquid gold (better than the real thing?), presumably preserved in ideal underwater temperatures with airtight corks, is making archaeologists, divers and wealthy drunks all tingly at the prospect of the oldest drinkable bubbly ever discovered.

Testing is currently underway to authenticate the vintage and point of origin, and connoisseurs are surely getting in line to drop the $68K/bottle it’ll likely go for if they are indeed the real deal. The precious cargo was found in a Russian-bound shipwreck about 200 feet underwater. Divers, who popped a cork for an on-board sample, praised it’s flavor — “a very sweet champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak.” It’s nice to know that despite modern technology’s endless advances, some things — bottle and brew included — got it right the first time around.

You can see a picture of one of the divers and an uncorked bottle from 1780 here at the Daily Mai UKl.
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