Featured Image: Reuters / Daily Mail
By: Adam Trautwig
When archeologists and scientists are given the opportunity to explore a shipwreck, they glimpse a window into the past. At the wreckage, sometimes nothing has changed for hundreds of years. Maybe that’s why it’s so strange when we see something familiar.
In the past, some of the bottles containing alcohol that were recovered from the ocean floor have not only still been drinkable, but in some cases were worth thousands of dollars.
In 2010, divers recovered 79 bottles of champagne from the Baltic Sea. When 11 of the bottles were sold at auction they fetched a price of 156,000 dollars. The lot sold included 6 Juglar (which hasn’t been made since 1829), 1 Heidsieck, and 4 Veuve Clicquot (which included the most valuable bottle auctioned at 15,000 euros).
Before you go strapping on some SCUBA gear, here’s a fair warning: most bottles of wine are not meant to age. This means that despite the wine cellar like conditions that the bottom of the ocean provides, most of what’s recovered is no longer fit for consumption (if it ever was).
Take for example the 200-year-old bottle of a watered down spirit (probably either vodka or gin) that had experienced seepage from the surrounding ocean. Researchers from the lab responsible for testing the contents of the bottle, J.S. Hamilton chemical laboratory in Poland, noted that although the contents wouldn’t poison a potential drinker they did have a rather unpleasant odor.
This doesn’t even account for the changes in taste that have developed over time.
Image Credit: Science Recorder
LiveScience noted that depending on a bottle of champagne’s ultimate destination, the mixture might have much more sugar than we are accustomed to. In some places, like 19th century Russia, tastes ran particularly sweet. Champagne from that time could have 6 or 7 times more sugar than Coca Cola (which we all know is already mostly sugar).
Sometimes the very processes responsible for the wine being so sought after, it’s aging, also results in the alcohol having some strange qualities. In bottles of champagne recovered from the floor that popped from the sudden change of pressure, researchers tasted notes of manure, tobacco, and animal from the yeast’s continued fermentation.
Smithsonian Magazine mentions that although it is highly unlikely that you will ever be able to sample the effects that hundreds of years of aging has on alcohol, there is a new trend towards recreating some of these rare finds with modern equipment.
The Smithsonian mentions that recreations include beer from ancient Egypt, Shakleton’s variety of Scotch that he brought to Antarctica, and Mayan ale. Dogfish Head Brewery has managed to recreate several “ancient ales” including a recipe based on residue found in clay pots dating back to the 8th century.
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