With the conditions at the bottom of the ocean (cold and dark) being optimum for fine wine and champagne storage, coupled with the frequency of these stories, one almost gets the feeling like they may have been planned.

Either way, it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

Let’s rewind first to 2011, where a BBC article details a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. They reckon the shipwreck occurred in the early 1800s and left a ‘booty’ of 140 bottles of champagne.

What value might this have, you ask? Looks like that shipwreck might be worth a decent whack:

A bottle of nearly 200-year-old champagne has been sold for 30,000 euros ($43,900; £26,700 or R645,000) at an auction in Finland – in what is believed to be a new world record.

The Veuve Clicquot bubbly was bought by an anonymous bidder from Singapore, auctioneers in Mariehamn said.

The same buyer paid 24,000 euros for another bottle of champagne, which was made by the now defunct Juglar house.

They were found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last year.

In all, more than 140 bottles were discovered by divers, and the wine is said to be in “exquisite” condition.

Over half a bar for a bottle of bubbles? Not bad, although I think there could be a smidgen of buyer’s remorse once the final drop is drunk.

If I personally had to buy bubbles with a R645 000 budget, I’d find more value with 2 900 bottles of L’Ormarins Blanc de Blancs vintage. But that’s just me.

On to this latest bounty – the result of a ship being sunk by a German U-boat in World War 1. Enjoy this, from War History Online:

An expedition is currently being planned to salvage a few million dollars’ worth of wine from the wreck of a ship sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Cornwall in 1918, during the First World War.

The ship, one of many sunk by German submarines during WWI, is over 300 feet below the surface. An initial exploration of the wreck revealed that there are several thousand intact bottles of wine, champagne and spirits on it – a cargo likely to be worth a substantial sum of money.

Indeed. And if you’re wondering how much priceless wine and champagne might be sitting at the bottom of the ocean, the number is significant. Keep in mind the massive volume of ships taken out by German U-boats in the day, and you’re looking at some big numbers.

All in all, German U-boats managed to sink over 5,000 vessels over the course of the First World War, while losing only 178 submarines…

Notable finds from vessels sunk during the First World War have been quite profitable for those who salvaged them. In 1997, for example, 2,000 bottles of champagne (1907 vintage) were salvaged from the wreck of a Swedish vessel sunk by a U-boat, and the champagne was sold for around $35,000 per bottle.

Bringing up wine from these wrecks is always a gamble, though. One salvage company spent close to $10,000 per day of operations bringing up wine from a 1919 shipwreck in the hope of striking it rich – but it turned out that all of the bottles had been invaded by bacteria that had ruined the wine and rendered it worthless.

Heartbreak.

Good luck, gang. Remember, there are easier ways to have a glass of bubbles 😉

That’s the L’Ormarins Blanc de Blancs vintage (2013) second from the right, for sale at a reassuring R220

[sources:bbc&warhistoryonline]