Wine from Water

Divers have found bottles of champagne some 230 years old on the bottom of the Baltic which a wine expert described on Saturday as tasting “fabulous”.

Thought to be premium brand Veuve Clicquot, the 30 bottles discovered perfectly preserved at a depth of 180 feet could have been in a consignment sent by France’s King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.

If confirmed, it would be by far the oldest champagne still drinkable in the world, thanks to the ideal conditions of cold and darkness. “We have contacted (makers) Moet & Chandon and they are 98 per cent certain it is Veuve Clicquot,” Christian Ekstroem, the head of the div

ing team, told AFP. "There is an anchor on the cork and they told me they are the only ones to have used this sign," he added.

The group of seven Swedish divers made their find on July 6 off the Finnish Aaland island, mid-way between Sweden and Finland, near the remains of a sailing vessel.

"Visibility was very bad, hardly a metre," Ekstroem said. "We couldn't find the name of the ship, or the bell, so I brought a bottle up to try to date it." The hand-made bottle bore no label, while the cork was marked Juclar, from its origin in Andorra.

According to records, Veuve Clicquot was first produced in 1772, but the first bottles were laid down for ten years. "So it can't be before 1782, and it can't be after 1788-89, when the French Revolution disrupted production," Ekstroem said.

The 230-year-old bottles of Veuve Clicquot (seen here in modern form) could fetch an auction price of "several million" dollars if proven to be King Louis XVI's wine.

Forest fugitive

France's most wanted fugitive ­ who escaped from prison in a cardboard box and lived in the woods for ten weeks ­ has been caught, the interior minister announced on Friday night.
Jean-Pierre Treiber, 47, a former forest worker and game-keeper, is accused of the kidnapping and double murder of a young couple in 2004. He had been on the run since September 8, when he shut himself into a cardboard box he had made and jumped from a lorry after it drove out of prison in Auxerre, Burgundy. His ability to survive in the forest had captured the French imagination ­ turning him into an anti-hero for some ­ but had become a source of great embarrassment to the police.

Pen DNA

One of darkest criminal mysteries in France, the murder of a little boy a quarter century ago, is back in the news after investigators found DNA on a poison-pen letter. The body of Gregory Villemin (4) was found tied up in the Vologne river in Vosges mountains, in October 1984. The next day, a letter arrived at his home claiming responsibility for the murder. The case was wrapped up in 2001 without identifying the murderer. Prosecutors relaunched the probe last December in the light of new DNA testing techniques and the results of a five-month expert analysis were filed with the state prosecutor on Thursday.