Champagne Under the Sea

On his outstanding wine blog Dr. Vino, Tyler Colman recently published this intriguing post about some bottles being aged in the sea off of the coast of Normandy by Champagne Louis Roederer. Admittedly, the idea isn’t entirely new. Back in 1849, a cache of Jacquesson was hidden in the hold of the Niantic when it ran aground, and since then, a good number of people in the wine world have been wondering about the possibilities of storing wine down in the ocean. After all, the conditions are pretty ideal: it’s a constant temperature of about 10° C (50° F), there’s little to no light at those depths, and it’s quite obvious that humidity isn’t a problem.

I asked Roederer’s chef de cave, Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon, about this story and he confirmed that Roederer has indeed sunk a number of bottles of Brut Premier and Cristal 2002 into the sea off of Mont St-Michel, and is planning to pull them up on the first of June, 2009, to taste them alongside identical bottles stored in the cellars in Reims. He’s promised that I will be there, so I’ll have more to say on this topic in about 12 months....