Bottle from the bottom of the Baltic Sea reveal the secrets of “Veuve Clicquot» – Euromag.ru

This helped chemists reveal two “secret” ingredient of the famous champagne “Veuve Clicquot” the beginning of the XIX century – Aged in oak barrels and grape syrup, according to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In recent years, scientists have made some interesting discoveries, which allowed them to assess what how to make drinks in antiquity. For example, two years ago, archaeologists found in the south of France winery pre-Roman times, which helped them to establish that the secrets of wine were imported into France from Etruria, an area in the north of Italy, RIA Novosti reported.

Philip Jandia from the University of Reims (France) and his colleagues managed to uncover the secrets of one of the first sparkling wine because of its unusual treasure that divers recovered from the bottom of the Baltic Sea off the coast of the Åland Islands in July 2010.

At a depth of 50 meters they were able to find the wreck, inside of which were scattered around 160 bottles of champagne from the famous “Veuve Clicquot”. Bold swimmers raised them to the land, opened a bottle of wine and tried to realize that they are dealing with champagne, which rests on the bottom of the sea for nearly two hundred years, and perfectly preserved.

Part of the precious findings was transferred to Jandia and other experts in the wine industry, who have studied the chemical composition of champagne and try to understand how and when it was made, where it is going.

As shown by chemical analysis and tasting, champagne from the bottom of the Baltic Sea belonged to the category of semi-dry and dry wines, that was a surprise to Jandia and his colleagues – they believed that these stocks “Veuve Clicquot” were sent to Russia, where since 1814 began hobby very sweet varieties of champagne. Apparently, his buyers are German principalities of the city, whose residents prefer wines with low sugar.

According to the large shares of metal ions in champagne, it was made of small berries, whose juice was stored in wooden barrels during primary fermentation, stay in which left traces in the form of a special carboxylic acids. This finding was also unexpected for chemists, because today winemakers do not use such vessels in the manufacture of sparkling wines.

Another unusual component was champagne grape syrup, which is added to the drink instead of beet sugar, which is usually sweetened with semi-dry and sweet wine today. In it’s easy to believe, as Madame Clicquot was an opponent of such sweeteners, and prefer to use a mixture of cane sugar syrup and berry.

Most of the scientists were surprised that the champagne is well preserved and almost did not contain traces of germs which cause spoilage of wine. This means that in the company of Madame Clicquot supports almost flawless occupational health, comparable to the modern practice of sparkling wine production.

On the other hand, as noted by the researchers themselves, the safety of bottles of “Veuve Clicquot” also indicates ideal conditions for storage of champagne at the bottom of the sea. This practice underwater storage of champagne might be interesting for modern winemakers conclude chemists.