Wine held underwater to test cellar methods

French winegrowers have submerged 276 bottles of local drink deep in an artificial lake and will keep them there for decades to see how they differ from bottles stored above ground for the same period.

Every 20 years, 24 of the submerged wine bottles will brought to the surface to test how the wine has changed.

A dozen frogmen placed the bottles of Arbois wine, kept in wire crates, 60 metres below the surface among the ruins of a sunken 12th century abbey in Vouglans, in the Jura region of eastern France.

Built by monks of the order of Saint Bruno, the Chartreuse de Vaucluse was submerged in 1968, when France's electricity operator, EDF, created a huge dam and France's third largest lake.

Nestling within its walls, the wine will be kept at 4 degrees Celsius, with pressure at seven bars and between 4 to 8 mg of oxygen per litre.
Every 20 years, a crate of 24 bottles will brought to the surface to test how the wine has changed, in parallel with the normally conserved bottles, according to domain Henri Maire, which organised the operation.

Besides the wine, 12 bottles containing messages from "different personalities from the arts, media, the world of wine and gastronomy" were also laid to rest at the bottom as a testament to "future generations about our art of living today," said Henri Maire.

The Arbois appellation (which draws its name from the town of Arbois) is the heart of the Jura region. Located along the eastern border of France, it runs parallel to Burgundy and is not far from Switzerland.

Arbois whites are produced from Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc and its yellow wine from the obscure Savagnin variety. The reds contain Pinot Noir, Trousseau and Poulsard grapes.

The Henri Maire domain last year sent 20,000 bottles around the world as an experiment, while crates of its yellow wine are currently stored in the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, far inside the Arctic circle, in minus 40 degree temperatures.

Henri Maire himself started the craze for such tests in 1955 by walling in bottles of vin jaune in the bowels of the Tour d'Argent, one of Paris' most famous restaurants with a sumptuous wine cellar.

The bottles are due to be removed in 2055.

Henry Samuel