Baltic Sea divers discover shipwreck with 100 bottles of champagne

A team of divers dedicated to combing the Baltic Sea for shipwrecks said they finally have reason to celebrate after discovering a 19th-century vessel laden with about 100 sealed bottles of champagne.

“I think we have a treasure,” Tomasz Stachura, leader of the Polish diving group Baltictech, posted to Facebook after the team’s July 11 discovery.

The wreck is about 20 nautical miles south of the Swedish island of Öland.

Stachura, who specializes in underwater photography, said the ship was in “very good condition” and “brimming with historical treasures, including crates of champagne, baskets of mineral water and porcelain.”

After analyzing some of the items on board, the divers estimate that the ship capsized in the second half of the 19th century.

The divers did not initially expect the wreck to be “anything significant,” Stachura said in an email to The Washington Post on Thursday, adding that the team “even hesitated for a moment whether to dive at all.”

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But two of the team’s crew members, Marek Cacaj and Pawel Truszynski, were determined to check out the wreck, Stachura said, adding that the pair were gone for almost two hours.

Stachura said he knew then that the team had probably located something special.

While the Baltictech team has found “numerous wrecks” in the Baltic Sea, it is unusual to find a shipwreck “loaded to the brim” with champagne, Stachura said.

“I have been diving for 40 years, and it often happens that there is one bottle or two … but to discover a wreck with so much cargo, it’s a first for me,” he said.

The team also discovered clay water bottles, with the German brand name Selters stamped on them.

During this period, the German brand was “highly valued” and “often reserved for royal tables,” Stachura said. The water was “considered almost medicinal.”

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Frank Schellmann, a spokesperson for Selters, said Thursday that the company was following news of the discovery with “great interest.”

“Such a find is indeed extraordinary — and particularly fascinating to us considering the quantities found and the location,” he said, though he added that Selters does not have any further information regarding the period in which the recovered bottles were dated.

Developments regarding the team’s discovery will be shared at the Baltictech 2024 Conference, which will be held in November in Poland.

While the divers notified Swedish regional authorities about their find, they might not be able to crack open the ancient champagne just yet.

Further exploration and the possibility of hauling the cargo to the surface “will take time due to administrative restrictions,” Stachura said, though he didn’t seem too fazed about waiting to review the treasure above water.

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“It had been lying there for 170 years, so let it lie there for one more year, and we will have time to better prepare for the operation,” he said.

But even if the team does eventually get a chance to sample the champagne haul, the quality of the wines would be “a lottery,” said Leta Bester, director at the London Wine Academy.

Factors such as the integrity of the cork and storage conditions underwater could influence the state of the champagne, Bester said.

How well a wine ages “largely depends on the quality of the wine in the first place,” Bester said. “If these wines were top-quality vintage champagne, then the chances are higher that some might survive.”

Bester noted that the majority of nonvintage champagnes are not meant for long-term aging, so “without knowing what wines they were in the first place, it is impossible to speculate.”

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If the bottles have remained sealed and there has been no contamination, the champagne would probably not be harmful, Bester said, before noting that it would be “crucial” to test a sample of the alcohol in a “controlled environment to ensure it meets modern safety standards.”

Sparkling wines do lose their bubbles over time, and the condition of each bottle would probably vary, Bester said.

“I doubt that they would be amazing to try,” she said. “Other than for the sake of the experience.”

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