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 Ravi Viswanathan, the Singapore-based Private Equity investor in Grover Zampa Vineyards, who also invested in Sula about a year ago, is a wine connoisseur with an enviable cellar in Burgundy. He was in the news when he purchased the most expensive Champagne at an auction in Finland in 2011 for over $40,000. At Rs. 2 million, it was then the oldest, most expensive and hopefully drinkable Champagne. The 170-year old bottle of Veuve Clicquot was reportedly bought as a 10th year anniversary present for his Russian wife. It is a collectors’ delight and he had still not opened the bottle when he had met me at Sulafest in Nashik a couple of months ago.
If he had opened the bottle he might have found it to be still drinkable but too sweet with heavy sugar level of about 150-160 gms of residual sugar, about 15-20 times that we have seen in today’s Brut at 8-12 gms of residual sugar or 4 times that of a demi-sec champagne that has around 35-40 gms (less than 50 gms) with traces of Arsenic, lead and copper.
Although he declines to admit or deny if it was from the same lot most of which have not been auctioned yet, the tell-tale signs point it to be a part of the 168 bottles recovered from the sea-bed, 50 meters beneath of Baltic Sea in July 2010. Only a few of these bottles found kept in a stable, dark and cold conditions have been sold so far at the auctions at tens of thousands of Euros each.
The location of the shipwreck suggested that these bottles were on their way to Russia as they were very popular then with the rulers of the Empire and their families. But they have sugar levels half of 300 gms/liter preferred by the Russians in those years. They might have been intended for German markets, which favoured moderately sweet wines. One hopes Ravi won’t be disappointed when he decides to open the bottle, as the paid guests at a recent tasting in USA found out to their chagrin that the champagne had turned into ‘vinegar’ and the highly priced event for tasting miniscule portion turned out to be a fiasco.
The study led by Prof Philippe Jeandet of the University of Reims in Champagne-Ardenne, France where I visited several Champagne Houses recently including the LVMH-owned Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin in Reims, looked at the "chemical and sensory analysis" of the historic liquid. He and his colleagues used various types of chemical analyses to compare the contents of three Veuve Clicquot bottles from the shipwreck, presumably similar to what Ravi Viswanathan has in his collection under display at his Singapore Restaurant.
Prof Jeandet told the BBC he only got to taste 0.1ml of the wine, as part of working with experts and winemakers at Veuve Clicquot to conduct the analysis. The quantity was so small that it was impossible to smell but tasting 100 micro-liters was fabulous, he said, adding that the flavours of tobacco and leather lingered for 2-3 hours.
The research team found the wine's composition to be surprisingly similar to the modern samples, with some notable differences. There weren't many bubbles left; logically, it had leaked out through the cork gradually over the years. However the stable under-sea conditions-a stable temperature of 2-4°C, relatively low salinity, low levels of light and high pressure, helped the wine hold rather well. The chemical features and composition were preserved all this time.
 Andrew Waterhouse, an oenologist at the University of California Davis, who I have met a couple of times at the International Heart and Health Convention in Napa Valley, finds the research very interesting, ‘This wine is a type of we still drink today. So it's not an ancient relic- it's part of our current history as we do drink champagne these days. But the style is very different from the way we drink, especially the sugar content. At 14% sugar level, it was much too sweet from today’s lifestyles. But it seems to have been sold at banquets and parties like today.’
Prof Waterhouse explains that there were traces of arsenic, indicating the use of arsenic salts to control pests in the vineyard, as well as surprisingly high levels of lead, iron and copper. These metals probably came from the barrels used before the wine was bottled, he added. These may have had iron fittings and brass valves, containing lead. This could also be the result of using a higher proportion of taille- a lesser quality juice from the second press of the grapes used to give structure. The old samples are also less alcoholic at around 9.5%, as compared to today’s champagnes at around 12%.
The findings were reported on 20 April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
It is interesting that Veuve Clicquot has now put 350 bottles of more recent vintage on the sea floor, close to Silverskär Island in Åland (pronounced ‘O’land) in Finland where the wreckage was found, to recreate the storage under water in a similar situation. The champagne maker plans to taste the bubbly every three years and compare it with identical bottles stored in their own cellars, to study how different pressures, temperatures, and oxygen levels can change the wine characteristics.
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