Drappier to Release the Submarine Champagne

The product offering in a wooden box is complete with ink illustrations by the creative director, Charline Drappier the 29-year old daughter of Michel and his wife Sylvie. Labelled as Immersion, the series offers a unique tasting experience-of comparing different ageing conditions (it is implicit that you open both the bottles the same evening to get a better understanding), according to a Report in dB.

The bottles will be available in selected retail stores in the UK as well as in France, Italy and Japan next month and will come in twin-packs, containing one bottle aged under water, the other from the regular cellars of Drappier.

The product is the result of the second and final experiment of immersing a number of its bottles in the sea, off the coast in Brittany. The bottles in the cage were kept underwater at the same temperature and light level as those stored in the cellars of Drappier. It was kept at a depth that gave same pressure of water outside as inside the bottle. Water around the bottles prevents even iota of air getting into the bottles.

Sea-wreck starts it all

My interest in the under-water matured wines was piques when I read about the Singapore –based PIO Ravi Viswanathan who has invested in both Sula and Grover Zampa, buying the oldest Champagne in the world auction in 2010. The bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne was found on the seabed from a sea-wreck in 1839, along with a stash of 145 other bottles. He paid a cool € 30,000 for the 10th anniversary Present for his Russian wife. It was quite exciting to see the bottle stored under a glass-top personal cellar in Singapore when I first visited him a few years ago and wondered if he would ever dare open the bottle. Such collectibles are for appreciation in value and not for drinking!

Apparently Michel Drappier was also as excited after seeing the champagne bottles being alive and kicking after being under water for 170 years, presumably under perfect temperature and pressure conditions in the dark. In July, 2013 Drappier decided to submerge 600 bottles of Brut Nature and 60 bottles of his iconic Grande Sendrée 2005 into Brittany’s Saint-Malo bay to age in the sea at a depth of 17 metres for a year.

He developed the confidence for the experiment after meeting his customer and a wine merchant Yannick Heude living in a French coastal town and who has been submerging several French wines into the sea for a number of years to assess the impact on their development. Among these experiments had been Louis Roederer’s Brut Premier in 2008-9 and Michel was impressed with the results.

Ideal conditions under water

Due to the water’s depth and the sandy sea floor, the environment is dark enough to ensure there is no risk of damage due to light, while the temperature is a constant 9-10°C. There is also a tidal influence that moves the bottles gently under water, which Michel says accelerates the maturation process.

Michel ensured that the water pressure was not greater than the 6-8 bars inside the bottle, so there was no danger of sea water entering the bottle and spoiling champagne. He believed the higher external pressure would have a beneficial influence on the champagne-from his experience. He knew that the sparkling wines aging at lower pressures at high altitudes, like on the mountain locations did not age very well.

Veuve Clicquot has also buried 300 bottles and 50 magnums of its Champagne in the Baltic Sea in an ageing experiment designed to commemorate the discovery of shipwrecked bottles in the same area in 2010.  The encaged underwater cellar was also named Aland Vault after the Aland shipwreck off the coast of Finland. It will remain buried for 50 years, according to  dB.

Here are some other producers in the game of under-water cellaring known by different names in different countries, but essentially meaning the same:

Champagne Louis Roederer: Roederer was perhaps the first Champagne house in the recent history, testing the method of underwater-aging and sharing results. In 2008, several bottles were submerged 15 meters underwater in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, the rocky tidal island off the coast of Normandy. In a tasting in 2009, after one year of aging submarine, quality and taste were claimed to be significantly better.

Bisson Abissi: Italian winemaker and Sommelier Pierluigi Lugano of Bisson Winery in Liguria had an idea that the Area Portofino Marine Park in Liguria was the ideal underwater-cellar for his sparkling wines. In May 2009, the first 6,500 bottles were submerged to mature in the seabed.

Gaia Wines in Santorini, Greece

Dr. Yiannis Paraskevopoulos and his partner Leon Karatsalos founded Gaia (Gay-ya) wines in Santorini in 1994. The winery became world famous after ageing Assyrtiko wines under water.  Starting the process in 2009 with 5 bottles that turned into vinegar, he downed 268 bottles in a crate with no problem the next year-the same number in 2011 had no problems either. Today, these wines are highly prized and snapped up for around € 80-100 a bottle by collectors. Yiannis claims the wines have developed unique characteristics by being submerged 50 meters in water at 12-20 °C.  No wonder, a BBC crew visited in his winery in Santorini to film the project in 2015, helping the winery in publicity globally.

Ervideira in Alentejo, Portugal

In 2014, Duarte Leal da Costa, owner of Adega Ervideira, started experimenting with underwater ageing by downing 4 cases of 12 bottles each, 30 meters deep in Lake Alqueva, one of the biggest artificial lakes in Europe, in Alentejo. All the corks were spoilt The following year, sealing wax from lac was used to properly seal the bottle. He submerged around 30,000 bottles -95 cases of 325 bottles each and brought up with filled balloons. He also tasted the underwater wines aged for 3 months, 6 months and 9 months but came to the conclusion that 8 months was the ideal time to store it under water.

 The first batch of 30,000 bottles of the 2014 vintage was released last year and has already been sold out. “In September 2015, we have put around 30.000 bottles, in 95 cases of 325 bottles each.  In May 2016, we have brought out the first set of cases to sell in the market.’ 

To get a hang for the process of taking down the cases, please watch the short videos on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNys3nmyvaI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bI3GdZQzQ&t=88s

Meera Winery in Napa

Meera Winery of Napa Valley has been a pioneer in the USA. Unfortunately, TTB (FSSAI of the US alcoholic beverage industry) has made them suspend the experiments. The FDA has advised them that aging wine in a way that bottle seals have contact with sea or ocean waters may render these wines adulterated and contaminated with filth or make them injurious to health.

TTB believes that the pressure of water may periodically increase or decrease due to tidal flow and storm surges. Overpressure on bottle seals increases the likelihood of seepage of sea or ocean water into the product. As a result, variation in overpressure during tidal flows and storms would allow the bottles to “breathe,” or exchange contents of the bottle with the sea or ocean, as the bottle tries to equilibrate its internal pressure to the external sea pressure, and chemical and biological contaminants in ocean water may contaminate the wine.

Edivo Vina in Croatia

The latest to enter the underwater ageing is the Croatian Winery  Located in Drače on the Pelješac Peninsula in Croatia (about 80 kms due North along the coast on the Adriatic Sea from Dubrovnik, the current hot favourite tourist resort town for many Indian travellers), Edivo Vina is the first Croatian winery successfully exploiting underwater ageing of wines commercially.

Thanks to the ship wreck in Finland in 1839 and the amount fetched in the auction (not all wines were found drinkable-at an event in the US where one such bottle was opened with much fan-fare to the audience who paid heavy amount for the privileged tasting, wine turned out to be ocean salty water!), the appetite and curiosity of winemakers has been whetted globally and many more such stories will come out in future. Who knows it might sea/oceans /lakes may become an extension of the existing cellars one day as the cost of immersion goes down with volumes.

It is unlikely that the ‘Immersion’ series from Champagne Drappier would ever land in India. But it might be well worth the efforts hand carrying a few bottles in India to help Drappier improve their brand image a couple of notches, like the iconic Grande Sendrée.

Subhash Arora

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