Update: Baltic shipwreck champagne was destined for Tsar Alexander II

Meticulous research into the bottles of champagne found in a shipwreck discovered in the Baltic sea south of the Swedish island of Öland in July 2024, has uncovered that they were destined for the table of Tsar Alexander II.

The well-preserved remains of the 19th century ship were found 190 feet deep by technical divers from the Baltictech Association. The ship stayed upright when it sank to the seabed, and the cold waters of the Baltic were ideal storage conditions for dozens of glass wine bottles and stoneware Selters mineral water bottles.

An expert in historic pottery identified the stamp on the Selters bottles as the emblem of the German Duchy of Nassau which the company used on its labels between 1836 and 1866. The cork on one of the Champagne bottles bore the faint imprint of Louis Roederer Champagne House of Reims.

Baltictech returned to the wreck site for a follow-up dive in 2025. They recovered a ceramic plate of the British Davenport company which could be dated to 1856. Since the plates didn’t linger in inventory, the ship must have begun its ill-fated voyage in late 1856 or early 1857.

All of this information helped Baltictech researchers to identify the ship as one sent by Adolf, Duke of Nassau, to Tsar Alexander. It was laden with champagne, mineral water, wine leather hides and porcelain. The champagne was an official state gift for the Tsar, who had ascended the throne when the Baltic was under blockade by Britain during the Crimean War. When Russia signed a treaty that ended the war in 1856, the blockade was lifted and heads of state like the Duke of Nassau hastened to reestablish relations.

The team reached out to Louis Roederer to find out more about the bottles, perform chemical analyses of the liquid inside the bottle and advise them on recovering a few samples. As luck would have it, one of Roederer’s champagne experts, Peter Liem, is also an experienced technical diver, so he was able to go down to the wreck and point specific bottles to recover. One was tested in Sweden, and several sent to Louis Roederer Champagne House in Reims for analysis.

The champagne contains 110 grams of sugar per liter and 12% alcohol and it is not just still drinkable, according to Peter Liem, it is “glorious:”

[P]atinated, authoritative, and immeasurably complex, this wine is not only alive, but downright vibrant and delicious to drink. It’s reminiscent of shiitake, saffron, kombu, saddle leather, cigar box, roasted coffee, with a fervent vitality and piercing intensity like a great amontillado. We believe that it’s from the 1857 vintage, although we are continuing to try to verify this for certain: if so, it was on its way to Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg.

Baltictech has requested a permit for a third exploration of the wreck. They hope to locate the ship’s bell and to excavate deep into the lowest levels of the cargo hold, looking for objects mentioned in the ship’s manifest that have yet to be found.

* This article was originally published here