VEUVE CLICQUOT HAS A WINE CELLAR IN THE SEA. HUNDREDS OF THE MAISON’S BOTTLES WILL BE AGED FOR 50 YEARS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE BALTIC SEA WHILE THE SAME AMOUNT WILL STAY IN REIMS, TO EVALUATE THE DIFFERENCES

The team of wineries that have chosen the depths of the sea to age their bottles adds a one of the most prestigious names to its list: Veuve Clicquot. One of the biggest Champagne maisons will experience the aging process in the Baltic Sea. Following the Ligurian Bisson winery of Pietro Lugano, who has been successfully aging its bubbles "Abissi" since 2009 at sixty meters below sea level in a location called Cala degli Inglesi, a pristine bay between the Lighthouse of Portofino and Cala d’Oro, and the experiences of firms such as the Bordeaux brands Chateau Haut-Brion Larrivet, the Mira Napa Valley’s Cabernet Sauvignon and the Roederer house with a few bottles of his famous Cristal, now it is the turn of the Veuve Clicquot project "Cellar in the Sea".

It was the chef de cave in person, Dominique Demarville, who went to Silverskär in the Åland Islands, an archipelago in Finland, to create an underwater cellar, under hypothetically ideal conditions (constant temperature of 4 degrees Celsius and the total absence of light) that will guard 100 bottles of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label and Demi-Sec, 100 of Vintage Rosé 2004 and 50 magnum of Yellow Label Non-Vintage blended basic wines (two years older than regular bottles) for 50 years. Besides the communication aspect, the project has a scientific goal: the same lot of bottles will be aged in cellars in Reims in order to evaluate the similarities and differences between the two methods.
Bottles from both wineries will be tasted every 2-3 years for the next 50 years, to understand how Champagne subjected to different conditions, evolves. The idea came from the discovery, four years ago, of 46 bottles of Veuve Clicquot at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that according to experts, were part of a cargo dated 1840 and had spent more than 165 years underwater. When the bottles were tasted, they had a "surprising freshness", which inspired the maison, says Demarville, to set up the project...