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.

Sure find

A schoolgirl's lost dinner money has turned up 27 years after it went missing. Lisa O'Neill, 35, lost the handwritten brown envelope containing two £1 notes at school when she was eight years old. But 27 years on, builders have rediscovered the lost cash while refurbishing the cloakroom. Lisa, now Lisa Dugdale, a section manager at Marks & Spencer in Dumfries, said: "I got a shock when the school rang to tell me they'd found my dinner money. I don't remember losing it, but I know I was in the second year of school at the time." She plans to either frame one of the old £1 notes or put them in a trust fund for her baby.

Old road

The first road atlas of its kind in western Europe, a 17th century book showing a highway network in England and Wales of just 73 roads, is to be sold at auction for up to £9,000. The route atlas, published in 1675, includes 100 double pages of black and white maps laid out in continuous strips depicting the major roads and crossroads across England and Wales. The work from the Britannica first volume ­ also marks the first time in England that an atlas was prepared on a uniform scale, at one inch to a mile. The 17th century map-maker claimed 26,600 miles of road was surveyed for preparing the atlas.