Divers Find Crates of Unopened Champagne in 19th-Century Shipwreck

A 19th-century shipwreck has been found off the coast of Sweden with more than 100 bottles of Champagne onboard—including some that still appear to be bubbly.

The booze-laden wreck was discovered this month by a team of Polish divers called Baltitech. Using sonar, they identified what appeared to be an unremarkable fishing boat on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. They didn’t expect to find much, but two divers—Marek Cacaj and Pawel Truszynski—volunteered to head down and take a quick look at the vessel.

Their brief trip turned into a nearly two-hour excursion. When they didn’t return right away, their colleagues knew they’d found something interesting.

The wreck was not a fishing boat but rather a sailing ship loaded with crates of Champagne, wine, mineral water and porcelain. Based on the vessel’s cargo, the divers have theorized that the wreck probably occurred sometime in the mid-1800s. It’s submerged under 190 feet of water about 20 nautical miles south of Öland, a Swedish island.

“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,” Tomasz Stachura, the leader of the team, tells the Washington Post’s Jennifer Hassan.

Though the discovery may be a first for Stachura, this is far from the first time alcoholic beverages—or their containers—have been discovered in shipwrecks. In 2010, underwater archaeologists found a schooner loaded with Champagne off the coast of Finland—and a few years later, a biochemist tasted some in the name of science. In 2021, divers found a Roman shipwreck off the coast of Italy that was loaded with wine amphorae, a type of pottery often used to transport the fermented beverage. And brewers in Australia have even made beer using yeast recovered from bottles found on a 220-year-old shipwreck.

While exploring the wreck site, the Polish divers couldn’t read the labels on the Champagne bottles, but they did see bubbles inside. Meanwhile, the clay water bottles were stamped with the word “Selters,” a German brand of mineral water that still exists today. Experts say these particular bottles were produced between 1850 and 1876, per the New York Times’ Amelia Nierenberg.

At the time, the mineral water was likely considered the most precious cargo onboard. Consumed primarily by royalty, the drink was “so precious that transports were escorted by the police,” Stachura tells BBC News’ Lauren Turner.

Frank Schellmann, a spokesman for Selters, tells the Washington Post that the company’s leaders have been eagerly following the news of the discovery.

“Such a find is indeed extraordinary—and particularly fascinating to us considering the quantities found and the location,” says Schellmann.

Where was the ship heading? And why did it have so many valuable items on board? The divers wondered whether it had been traveling toward Russia, as Nicholas I reportedly lost a ship near Sweden in 1852, per BBC News.

The divers alerted Swedish authorities about the vessel and its cargo. Though the wreck is still making its way through the Swedish administrative process, marine archaeologists may one day bring the cargo to the surface for further analysis.

Would the wine be any good after so many years underwater? It depends on how well sealed the bottles are, whether any seawater leaked in and the quality of the wine in the first place.

Some modern companies have been experimenting with purposefully aging sparkling wine underwater. In late 2022, the Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten submerged 1,700 wax-sealed bottles of sparkling wine about 111 feet deep in the Norwegian Sea, where temperatures hovered around 41 degrees Fahrenheit. After recovering the bottles in July 2023, they served the wine aboard their cruise ships as part of an offering called Havets Bobler, or Bubbles From the Sea—and passengers loved it so much the company sank another 4,500 bottles in December. They’ve since recovered those, as well.

Regardless of whether the wine tastes good, the recent discovery in the Baltic Sea is still a “frozen time capsule,” as Johan Rönnby, a maritime archaeologist at Sweden’s Södertörn University, tells the Times.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.