Strange taste of sea champagne

When tasting champagne in a wreck under the sea for hundreds of years, people feel the taste of coffee, mushrooms, lemons, honey and flowers.

Richard Juhlin expert tastes champagne from the wreck of the Baltic Sea on November 17. (Photo: AP).

Divers found 168 bottles of champagne labeled Veuve Clicquot (France) in a wreck near Finland's Aland autonomous islands in July. The island belongs to the Baltic Sea.

' All 168 bottles are intact and most are in good condition ,' AP quoted Britt Lundeberg, the Aland architect's cultural official.

At first, divers said that the wine store was produced in the 1980s, but experts said that the wine was put into bottles since the early 19th century, the AP said. To date, no one has given the exact time of the 168 bottles of wine produced.

Richard Juhlin, a former Swedish teacher and thought to be the world's best tasting expert, drank champagne from a wreck and a new bottle of wine in the presence of several dozen reporters in the city. Mariehamn belongs to the Aland Islands on November 17.

' Great! It has a strong taste and is very different from everything you've ever tasted before. I feel a lot of flavors, including the smell of lemon peels and lilies ', the expert said.

About 20 other people, including an AP journalist, were also invited to taste champagne. This journalist feels the taste of brewer's yeast, honey and a variety of mushrooms when drinking alcohol in his mouth.

Francois Hautekeur , who works for Veuve Clicquot, said that wine has the flavor of coffee, lemon and many kinds of flowers.

Some bottles of champagne taken from the wreck of the Baltic Sea will be auctioned. Juhlin predicts they can be bought for $ 70,000 per bottle. Many people claim that they are the oldest champagne bottles in the world, but Perrier-Jouet, a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard, a wine maker in France, disagrees. Perrier-Jouet claims they have bottles of champagne made in 1825 and they are the oldest surviving champagne bottles.