To purists it may be a crime, but French wine buffs believe they have come up with a better place for storing wine than the cellar. They have taken to dumping it - quelle horreur - on the seabed.
A crab boat helped by abalone fishermen in wetsuits winched up two enormous crates covered in seaweed and limpets from a depth of 30ft.
Six hundred bottles, half red and half white, had been stored for the past year in the slatted wooden crates that allowed a current of eight knots (9mph), as Heude put it, to “massage the bottles twice a day”.
Was this massage responsible for the different flavour? “The ageing effect is certainly different than on land,” said Heude, who detected a “certain extra freshness” in the underwater whites.
“We knew the sea was a good wine cellar because in terms of the level of humidity, you couldn’t find better.”
He went on: “There’s no ultraviolet sunlight and the average temperature is stable at between 9C and 12C below 10 metres. What we didn’t know was the effect of the tides and the currents. They amplify the wine’s evolution, which seems younger when it comes out of the sea, but with smoother and rounder flavours and smells.”
The bay was chosen because of its strong tides. Another 600 bottles have been lowered into the water for a one-year massage. “Now each year we will do it again,” said Heude.
Source: Times Online
Tags: Underwater | Wine
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