In 1988, when divers in the Baltic Sea found champagne bottles in a Swedish schooner that had been wrecked back in 1916, they had no idea what would follow. The divers brought the bottles up to land and opened one. Amazingly, the champagne was completely drinkable and tasted good…….really good. Although it would take a few years for the idea to take hold, this was the birth of underwater wine. Winemakers theorized that if wine from a wrecked ship was good, why not replicate it? Sensing a possible new selling point, they did just that. Underwater wine posed its own set of questions, though: would it work, would the wine be as drinkable as the shipwrecked wine, and would it be worth the effort? The answers to all three questions was a resounding yes. In 2010, underwater wineries began springing up all over Europe after it was discovered that the Mediterranean Sea was the perfect place to sink wine. There are now underwater wineries in Spain, Croatia, Portugal, Greece and Italy. Aging wine on land for 12 months and then submerging it in the sea for another 6 months not only speeds up production, but the resulting wine tastes as if it’s much older than it really is. As for the taste, connoisseurs say it varies from grape to grape and bottle to bottle, but on the whole the taste of underwater wine tends to linger a little longer than land-aged wines. Now for the down side: underwater wine is expensive. However, if you’re a real wine lover, the cost shouldn’t shy you away completely.
