Immersion Wines Tasting: Does the Theory Behind Ocean Aging Hold Water?

The idea to purposely immerse wines underwater only emerged about 15 years ago, when producers were inspired by some shipwrecked Veuve Clicquot Champagne that turned out to be surprisingly good after 160 years in its watery tomb. Enough time has since passed to see how various methods of leveraging the constant temperature, darkness and pressure below sea can potentially affect the aging process and taste of wines.

More and more wineries, often from Italy, Greece, Portugal, and France, are using small batches to test the “ocean aging” or “underwater cellaring” technique, as it has become known, to offer a unique experience to their customers. Julien Peros, the director of wines at the Rosewood Hotel in Hong Kong, recently organized a special dinner featuring a tasting of immersed wines versus their conventionally aged counterparts to see if any actual differences could be discerned (and for fun, of course!).

After all, some of the bottles of that Veuve Clicquot Champagne, brought up in 2010 from the Baltic Sea, later sold for as much as $30,000 apiece. So is there something to the theory beyond dreamy, fizzy conjecture?

During our dinner at the Rosewood’s the Dining Room by BluHouse, the first wine we tasted was also a Champagne – the Drappier Champagne Carte d’Or Brut. The immersed Drappier we tried  was aged underwater on its lees and the dosage was done after immersion, yet reaching the same 6.5 grams per liter as for the non-immersed bottle.

While the nose of both the immersed and conventional bottle were very similar, the immersed version showed much more tension and energy on the palate compared with the normal bottling, which appeared to have a creamier and smoother texture. The differences were subtle but clear.

The same could be said about the white wine we tried – the Domaine de Courtade Côtes-de-Provence Blanc 2021, which is made from the rolle (vermentino) grape. The character of the immersed bottle was more nuanced and less fruity compared with the normal bottling. It also had an enhanced minerality, as was the case with the immersed Drappier Champagne. It's almost as if the undersea aging for both the Champagne and white wine brought out a mineral, steely character, added tension and dimmed the fruit. In both cases, I clearly liked the immersed version better, especially from a gastronomic perspective.

The red wine we tried was from the same producer as the white. The Domaine de Courtade Côtes-de-Provence Rouge 2021 is a blend of 50 percent mourvedre and 50 percent syrah. It is a very characterful and charming red – spicy, earthy and peppery with hints of cured meat and smoked bacon character on one hand and beautiful fruit on the other. And being an “island” wine, it had a lot of umami flavors, including notes of sea urchin, iodine and iron. I couldn’t be convinced that there was a difference between the immersed and conventional bottles outside the normal bottle variations, but I really liked the wine in general.

We finished our tasting and meal with the Podere San Cristoforo Petit Verdot Maremma Amphora Maris 2020, which was bottled in small, handmade amphorae that were aged under the sea off Italy’s Tuscan coast. This is a very typical fruit expression of petit verdot, with blackberries and blackcurrants. It's more opulent, almost like a New World wine with richness to its fruit, yet it comes with freshness and is very vivid and agile. This one was tasted without its conventional counterpart, but on its own it left a notable impression and was my top pick from the tasting.

All the immersed wines we tasted were aged in the sea for nine months – about usual for an underwater wine (some producers think if a wine is kept underwater for too long a period of time it can lose its “edge”) and enough time to make each bottle seem sea-worn, with shells and minerals clinging to the glass. Overall, it was a fascinating tasting experience, but it's probably best to do a comparative tasting or two yourself to find out whether the "ocean aging" theory holds any water.

– Andrii Stetsiuk, Associate Editor