200-year-old champagne to be sold at auction in Finland

This file picture taken on November 17, 2010, in Mariehamn shows the manager of the Aaland museum, Viveka Loendal, presenting to the media one of the 162 Veuve Clicquot bottles of champagne recovered from a shipwreck dating from 1840. AFP pic

HELSINKI, June 6 Eleven bottles of 200-year-old champagne salvaged from a Baltic Sea shipwreck will be auctioned off this week in Finland. Officials said they hoped for a new record for the price of a bottle.

Expectations were running high in Finlands autonomous province of Aaland, where the bottles were found in 2010, after a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the same shipwreck was auctioned last year for a record-setting 30,000 (RM119,470).

That encouraged us to organise a new auction, Rainer Juslin, an Aaland provincial government official, said in a statement.

The bottles are part of the booty from a shipwreck dating from between 1825 and 1830, and discovered in July 2010 on the sea floor near Finlands autonomous Aaland archipelago.

A total of 145 bottles from the distinguished champagne houses of Veuve Clicquot, Heidsieck & Co and the now-defunct house of Juglar were rescued from the wreck, according to the Aaland Islands provincial government.

Six bottles of Juglar, four bottles of Veuve Clicquot and one bottle of Heidsieck & Co will be auctioned on Friday.

Champagne expert Richard Juhlin, who tasted and helped to identify the salvaged bottles, has attested to the quality of the champagne, its taste preserved by the ideal conditions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

The Aaland government designated one of Frances leading auction houses, Artcurial, to organise the auction, which will take place at the Congress and Cultural Centre in Mariehamn on Friday at 3:00 pm (1200 GMT).

The profits generated by the auction will go to a variety of charitable causes. AFP/relaxnews