Shipwreck Champagne fetches £27k

A bottle of vintage Champagne recovered from the bottom of the Baltic Sea has sold at auction for almost £27,000.

Divers retrieved the bottle, one of a batch of 145, from a wreck estimated to be around 200 years old.

The Veuve Clicquot champers sold for a world record 30,000 euros, or almost 27 grand.

That just pips the previous record price paid for a bottle of champagne, a 1959 Dom Perignon sold in 2008.

Christian Erikson led a dive team scouring the remains of the Baltic shipwreck, believed to be a schooner built between 1780 and 1830.

Experts have concluded that the vessel was on its way to the court of Czar Nicholas of Russia when it foundered.

A second bottle of Juglar Champagne salvaged from the ocean fetched 24,000 euros. Juglar ceased trading in the early 19th century.

Within the wreck, divers also documented and retrieved bottles of beer dating from the period, believed brewed as early as 1811.