Divers scavenging in shipwrecks slumbering at the bottom of the North Sea since World War II were disappointed not to find dazzling troves of gold and jewels.
As consolation, not only did they turn up decades-old wine, but the wine came with a bonus: It was better than equivalent vintages selling for top dollar in luxury caves.
Among the latest to test the benefits of a deep soak are Bandol winemakers in southern France who teamed up with a dive school for a year-long experiment.
Photo: AFP
Choosing a tranquil section of a marine park off the Riviera, they submerged 120 bottles of Bandol wine to a depth of 40m, leaving them there for a year.
Another 120 bottles were kept in a cellar for comparison purposes.
“It’s important not just to live long, but to live well,” said Guillaume Tari, head of the regional wine association Vins de Bandol.
Submersion in deep waters “preserves the acidity because there’s not much light, there’s absolutely no air, it’s relatively cool and the temperature is constant,” Tari said.
The underwater conditions — total darkness and constant temperature — are thought to initially accelerate the aging process, adding complexity to the wine. Over longer periods, the aging process slows or stops altogether, making underwater storage excellent for conservation and explaining why shipwreck wine emerges so well.
Master sommelier Gisele Marguin took part in a blind tasting, comparing the underwater Bandols with the same wines stored in a traditional cave.
The underwater Bandol had “a nice texture in the mouth, a good structure and notes of very ripe dark fruit ... even chocolatey ... but its “secondary aromas are not sufficiently present,” she said
“I think that this only can be done with great vintages. It wouldn’t be much use to submerge wines with a less promising future,” she said.
The results of similar experimentation elsewhere in France — in western Brittany and in the southwest — remain largely confidential.
However, Philippe Faure-Brac, who was named the world’s best sommelier in 1992, recalled: “Twenty years ago we had the privilege of tasting bottles of white — Sancerre and Pouilly — off the coast of Noirmoutier that were placed in oyster beds” for a few months.
They were “exceptional bottles in their complexity and conservation,” he said.
The approach can be used with reds, whites and roses, but Tari said red wines are especially enhanced by long submersion, calling the result “the must of musts.”
Faure-Brac said that the technique costs more for the winemaker because of the extra time and logistics required.
“Lots of winemakers talk about it,” he said. “People in the spirits trade are also thinking about experimenting with cognacs and rums.”
So far underwater wines have not gone to market.
However, Tari is optimistic: “Obviously if you can gain one or two decades [on the aging process], it could be worth it.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS