(CNN) -- Divers are recovering bottles of champagne that have been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two centuries, an autonomous Finnish island official said Wednesday.
About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly 164 feet] south of the Aland Islands.
"The first bottle was brought to the surface in mid-July," Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island's ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland islands. "We believe this is the oldest champagne in the world".
Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have possibly been sent by France's King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.
"Champagne of this kind was popular in high levels [of society] and was exclusive to rich groups -- it was not a drink for common people then," Juslin said.
CNN
