Deep sea bubbles The rise of underwater champagne

You might think that 1,500 years after the first bottle was drunk there wasn't Y much more innovation left to be had in the rarefied world of champagne. You would be wrong. The next big thing in the $7.5bn-a-year industry is: undersea ageing.

- Rupert Neate

Like so many of the best innovations, it began by accident. In 2010, a group of divers in Finland's Åland archipelago came across the wreck of a ship that sank in 1852 and were surprised to find 145 bottles of champagne 50 metres below the surface. Even more surprisingly, the bottles were still full and tasted - in the words of a professor of food biochemistry - "incredible - I have never tasted such a wine in my life".

The labels had washed off but wine detectives found branding images that enabled them to identify their origin. Many were from the Juglar maison, which disappeared in 1829 when its vineyard was taken over by a competitor, and there were 47 bottles of Veuve Clicquot.

Two years after the discovery, 11 of the bottles were auctioned for a total of $156,000. One of the Veuve Clicquot bottles was the top lot, selling for €15,000 ($16,400).

That was before the contents of the bottles had been analysed - and tasted - by experts. Now the value of the bottles has reached as high as $190,000.