A bottle of Veuve Clicquot, among the world’s oldest champagne, was auctioned for a record-setting €30,000 near where it was found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
The nearly 200-year-old bottle was part of the booty from a shipwreck dating from between 1825 and 1830, and discovered last July on the sea floor near Finland’s autonomous Aaland archipelago.
The observers, media and bidding agents packed into the auditorium in the centre of Mariehamn burst into applause as auctioneer John Kapon, the head of speciality wine auctioneer Acker Merrall and Condit, cried: “A new world record, 30,000!” as he gavelled the winning bid.
A bottle of champagne from the now-extinct house of Juglar, which was salvaged from the same wreck, sold for €24,000 in the same auction.