Finnish divers recently discovered several crates of champagne and beer from a sunken ship that had been at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for nearly two centuries. The experts carefully identified, researched, and analyzed the alcohol...then they drank it.The divers discovered the wreck just south of Aaland, a Finland-controlled archipelago of some 6,500 small islands in the Baltic Sea. Inside the sunken schooner, they found 168 bottles of champagne and an undisclosed amount of bottles of beer. The ship itself likely dates back to the second quarter of the 19th century, making its cargo almost certainly the oldest alcoholic drinks in existence. By comparison, the oldest wines in private hands are only thought to date back to the very end of the 1800s.This entire story is a good reminder of a basic scientific truth - when in doubt, start drinking the 200-year-old booze. The divers first discovered the champagne was drinkable when changing pressures caused the cork to pop off one of the bottles, and a diver decided to take a swig.

He expected to taste seawater that had seeped into the bottle over the last 200 years - which raises very legitimate questions about just why he decided to take a sip in the first place - but was shocked to discover the wine still tasted fine.The divers all had some of the ancient wine, and then resealed the wine and brought it to wine expert, or sommelier, Ella Grussner Cromwell-Morgan. Here's how she described it:"Despite the fact that it was so amazingly old, there was a freshness to the wine. It wasn't debilitated in any way. Rather, it had a clear acidity which reinforced the sweetness. Finally, a very clear taste of having been stored in oak casks."Other descriptions that came out of a recent official tasting range from "lime blossoms, coffee, chanterelles" to " yeast, honey and...a hint of manure." Whatever the exact taste, the champagne was definitely significantly sweeter than what we're familiar with today. While a modern bottle has about 9 grams of sugar, a typical bottle in the 1830s had 100 grams of sugar, and Russians were known to add an extra spoonful of sugar just to make sure it was sweet enough.

So how did the alcohol survive for so long under the sea? That's actually the absolute best place to keep them, as champagne expert Richard Juhlin explains:"Bottles kept at the bottom of the sea are better kept than in the finest wine cellars."We can only hope this starts off a craze of storing wine inside shipwrecks. If you really care about your wine, I don't see any alternative. And it really was incredibly well-preserved - other than a loss of fizziness from the slow loss of air bubbles over the nearly 200 years, the wine tasted exactly the same as it would have back in the 1800s.best way to open an old bottle of wineAnd what about the beer? top wine china 2015The divers, for their part, say they're more interested in the beer than the champagne, as wreck discover Christian Ekstroem comments:"I don't care so much about the champagne. best way to serve rose wine

Champagne we can only sell or drink up, but ... we can use the beer to produce something unique and local. Ekstroem says the beer is just as phenomenally well-preserved as the wine. When one of the bottles cracked open on board their ship, the divers saw the liquid froth up just like a new beer would, indicating the yeast was somehow still alive. There's no word on whether the divers then hit the deck and started drinking up the spilled beer, but knowing this story, I wouldn't exactly be surprised. best german wine listYou just don't let ancient booze go to waste.the best wine in nz[Yahoo News and Bloomberg]best time to visit wine country in californiaThe bottle of Grand Constance 1821, from South African estate Groot Contantia, is currently being auctioned online on CataWiki, closing on Friday 15 July – the day after Bastille Day that has come to symbolise the French Revolution.

Bids were over £1,100 on 14 July. Fewer than a dozen bottles of the 1821 vintage have been preserved. Napoleon is known to have enjoyed Grand Constance wine while exiled on the island of St Helena, after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. According to Groot Constantia, the French Emperor had 30 bottles per month of the Grand Constance shipped over to St Helena, before his death in 1821. Oz Clarke wrote in The History of Wine in 100 Bottles that ‘none drank [Constantia] as furiously as Napoleon.’ Whilst imprisoned on St Helena, Napoleon and his staff also enjoyed a bottle of Champagne per day, and 10 bottles of ‘claret’, according to official records. Groot Constantia is believed to be the oldest wine estate in South Africa, producing wines since 1685. In 19th century novel Sense and Sensibility, Grand Constance is recommended for ‘its healing powers on a disappointed heart’. It is also referred to in Charles Dickens’s final and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Sir Winston Churchill drank so much Pol Roger Champagne that there is a cuvee named in his honour. Champagne and World War One: Champagne lost people, vineyards, buildings and markets as a result of vicious fighting during World… The British Isles has influenced certain wine styles more than any other nation. Julien Hitner looks back at the history…When you think of the price of wine, you usually associate it with the age, right? Well, that's only partly true, at least when it comes to some of the most expensive bottles ever sold. Here are 5 price tags that will pop your cork. 1. CHÂTEAU LAFITE, 1787 — $156,450 Okay, so, yes, 1787 is ancient, especially considering this bottle of Bordeaux at this price was sold in 1985. But don't forget, even the best Bordeaux only lasts about 50 years. Why the hefty price tag? Well, this particular bottle had the initial Th.J. etched into it. That's right, Jefferson was a hard-core oenophile. During the time that he served as ambassador to France, he often traipsed out to Bordeaux and Burgundy looking for wine for his cellar back stateside.

His initials etched into two other bottles have also fetched pricey sums: A 1775 Sherry that fetched $43,500, and — ready for this? — the most expensive bottle of white wine ever sold, a 1787 Chateau d'Yquem for $56,588. Price per glass: $26,075 2. JEROBOAM OF CHÂTEAU MOUTON-ROTHSCHILD, 1945 — $310,700 Okay, so now you're confused, right? First I said the most expensive bottle ever was about $160K and now at number two I've listed one that cost almost twice that. Three sheets to the wind? See, this bottle of red that sold in 2007 was a large bottle, not a standard-size. But take a look down below at the price per glass and you'll see which is truly the more expensive of the two. Had this giant bottle been a standard 750 ml bottle, it would have only sold for $51,783. (By the way, 1945 is considered one of the very best vintages of the 20th century and Mouton-Rothschild one the world's greatest clarets. If you ever happen upon a bottle, don't drink it!) Price per glass: $8,631

3. INGLENOOK CABERNET SAUVIGNON NAPA VALLEY, 1941 — $24,675 Sold in 2004, this Cabernet is regarded as the most expensive bottle of American wine ever sold. Inglenook is now known as Rubicon and owned by Francis Ford Coppola, who is said to keep one of them (empty) on top of his refrigerator. "It was one of the best I'd ever had," he has said about the wine. So how did it taste? "There is a signature violet and rose petal aroma that completes this amazingly well-preserved, robust wine that had just finished fermentation at the time of Pearl Harbor." Talk about seeing the glass half-full. Price per glass: $4,113 4. CHÂTEAU MARGAUX, 1787 — $225,000 There I go again. And this is a standard 750 ml bottle. So what's it doing buried way down here? Well, this bottle actually resides in the Most Expensive Bottle of Wine Never Sold category. That's right, I said never sold. In 1989, the bottle collided with a tray at a wine dinner and New York wine merchant William Sokolin collected $225,000 from insurance!