World's Oldest Heidsieck Champagne Found in Shipwreck Cache

You may recall last year a group of scuba divers discovered a cache of 230-year old champagne in a Baltic wreck, as well as the Finnish government subsequently imposing a dive ban on -- what became dubbed -- Champagne Wreck.

Yesterday it was reported that a third brand of champagne has been discovered among the vintage bubbly.

Champagne experts have discovered what are believed to be the oldest existing bottles of Heidsieck champagne, salvaged from a shipwreck near the Finnish province of Aaland, local authorities said Monday.

Divers stumbled across a cargo of around 150 champagne bottles last July in a two-masted schooner which had run aground sometime between 1825 and 1830, and by last November experts had already identified the world's oldest Juglar and Veuve Clicquot brands among the bottles.

"When re-corking the almost 200-year-old bottles a third brand has now been discovered," Aaland authorities said in a statement.

Four bottles have been identified as having come from the Heidsieck & Co Monopole house, which is now owned by Vranken Pommery Monopole.

"In the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s it was one of the leading champagne houses, and it was one of those that we expected we might find in the cargo," Richard Juhlin, one of the world's leading champagne experts, told AFP.

Juhlin, who has been helping local authorities re-cork and catalogue the champagnes, added that only one of the Heidsieck bottles was in prime condition.

"The Heidsieck Monopole is around 75 percent pinot noir... It has some flower notes, slightly more toasty notes than the Veuve Clicquot," he said.

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Anyone else suddenly thirsty?