Champagne found in 19th century shipwreck off Sweden banned

No one will be allowed to extract any of the roughly 100 bottles of 19th-century champagne and mineral water hidden in a shipwreck off the coast of southern Sweden without proper permission, officials said Wednesday.

Although the location of the wreck has been known since 2016 and is registered in the cultural environment of the National Office of Antiquities in Sweden, Polish divers only found the precious cargo on July 11.

The wreck, located at a depth of about 190 feet off the coast of Blekinge County in southern Sweden, was found by divers as they were examining areas of interest about 20 nautical miles south of the Swedish island of Öyland in the Baltic Sea.

“I’ve been a diver for 40 years. Every now and then, you see a bottle or two,” Thomas Stachura, who leads the team, told partner CBS News. BBC News“But I’ve never seen boxes of alcohol bottles and water baskets like this.”

Wine and water experts quickly contacted divers and scrambled to conduct laboratory tests on the contents of the bottles, Stachura said. However, Swedish authorities took a firm stance, describing the sunken ship as an “ancient relic” that Sweden says needs “clear and robust protection” to remain intact.

“It is not permissible to damage ancient artifacts, including taking items from the wreck, such as champagne bottles, without permission from the county,” county official Magnus Johansson told The Associated Press. “The champagne bottles are a wonderfully preserved find that gives us a glimpse into shipping and life on board the ship at the end of the 19th century.”

Local authorities said that if the wreck had dated back to before 1850, it would have automatically been listed as an ancient monument.

“But we proved that the cultural and historical value of the wreck was so high that it should be declared an ancient monument,” said Daniel Tidenlind, a county official in the nearby city of Kalmar.

Diver Stachura said earlier that it was believed the cargo may have been on its way to the royal table in Stockholm or the Russian tsar’s residence in St. Petersburg when the ship sank sometime in the second half of the 19th century.

Champagne has been discovered in historic shipwrecks before.

In 2011, a nearly 200-year-old bottle of champagne found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea sold for €30,000 at auction in Finland, the BBC reported. ReportedThe previous year, diving instructor Christian Ekstrom and his team had discovered 30 or so bottles of champagne On a sunken ship near the Åland Islands. The bottles, found 200 feet below the surface, are believed to date back to the 1780s and were likely part of a shipment bound for Russia, Ekstrom said.