200 Year Old Champagne To Be Auctioned

Two bottles of Champagne which lay for 200 years in the Baltic Sea come under the hammer in Finland in June. They are part of a cache of 168 bottles found last summer in a wrecked schooner dating from the second quarter of the 19th century, in Finland's Åland archipelago. The name of the vessel is still unknown, as is its destination, but it is thought the cargo was bound for the court of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I in St Petersburg. The bottles were pronounced "very much alive and remarkably fresh" by Essi Avellan MW, editor of Finland's FINE Champagne magazine, who tasted them last September.