Underwater Wine

Underwater Wine

Wilimee Pinot Noir and Chardonnay

The inspiration for maturing wine underwater sparked my curiosity in 2003 when learning about the technique from a trip to Spain by my former boss. He raved about the wine he tasted & I thought why isn’t anyone doing it in Australia? I wondered how the wine would taste after being submerged underwater. With further reading, I discovered that many ocean shipwrecks contained wine bottles and these were fetching thousands of dollars at wine auctions. In particular one story stood strong, that being the schooner Jonkoping smuggling contraband (particularly the 1907 Charles Heidsieck) to Russia, was sunk in the Baltic Sea during World War One. A German submarine U22, sank the Jonkoping on November 3, 1916, ironically the commander of the U boat, his childhood best friend was the commander of Jonkoping… Then in 1997 a salvage team located the boat and found its precious cargo, some 80 years later. These wines have since been touted as the world’s most expensive Champagne, fetching up to $275,000. In fact my brother was in Singapore and found a bottle of this wine at the Atlas wine bar for $190,700 a nice play on the vintage 1907!

 Without being able to taste any Underwater wines (too expensive and no one else in Australia doing this) we finally embarked on our own project with our inaugural 2015 Pinot Noir vintage from Wilimee.

Important to note: this is not a winemaking trial. It’s an elevage/maturation technique. The wine is bottled (ie finished) before being submerged underwater. Cork is used, as screwcaps deteriorate in the water.

There are 4 main influences on wine maturation:

1.      Constant temperature

This changes from winter to summer, the thermal mass of water means it’s a very slow and gradual change. Approximately 5C in the winter to 10C in the summer.

2.      No light

3.      No oxygen

4.      Pressure/weight of the water on the bottles, means the wines are maturing under an extra 0.35 atmospheres ie. 5 Tonnes of water.

We then had to decide where to mature our Pinot Noir.  We eliminated the ocean, as it’s a free for all and without travelling great distances a random ‘lobster’ diver or the like, would surely discover our precious wine and ‘presto’ our wine would disappear! Hence our attention drew to water inland, a lake or a dam. Again lakes were eliminated due to distance, so we considered our dam. Unfortunately we only have the one dam on our property, its spring feed in the winter and the water temperatures are 4C, so bloody cold to go diving for wine. Fortunately when we bought Wilimee, our shed was used for winemaking and contained a few large wine tanks. Here we were safely able to store our wine and easily fill the tanks to the brim with water from our dam.

The next major decision was how long to mature our wines underwater? Obviously from reading the ship wreck stories, we couldn’t wait 100 years. I also learnt that other wines maturing in the ocean were only in the water for 6 months to 18 months, very unlike the ship wrecks! Their reasoning being that as the water is constantly moving due to the current and tide, their wines are maturing at a rate of 3 to 5 times faster. I then naturally wondered, wouldn’t the ship wreck wines taste like they are 300+ years old, meaning they’re probably buggered. I surmise the only reason they are still drinkable, is probably because those wines are buried in the ocean mud and not as influenced by the movement of the water.

As our underwater Wilimee wines are 600m elevation, the waters are effectively stagnant, so the main question was how will our underwater wines differ to those from the ocean. Will they age quickly (like the ocean wines) or will they mature slowly and more gracefully. Time is the only way to find out, so patience is the key. Since the 2015 vintage, we have been consecutively submerging every vintage of Wilimee Pinot Noir every winter. This has also given the opportunity to taste our underwater wines yearly and to see their progression. We choose 5 years as a starting point to mature underwater, as this is similar to the great wines of Champagne, where they mature wine on lees in their underground cellars for an average of 5 years. Our quest is ongoing, as 5 years shows a lovely digression from the same wine matured in our cellar. We have kept a small batch of each vintage underwater to push the envelope to see how far our wines will mature while remaining enjoyable to our consumers. I have no doubt 10 years underwater will reveal more magic, a magic of wine evolution while telling a story of terroir and evolution.

https://www.wilimeewines.com.au/shop/pinotnoir-underwater

 https://www.winetraveler.com/discover/underwater-wineries-to-visit-aging-wine-science-discovery/

https://winepilot.com/story/going-deep-with-wilimee/ https://winecompanion.com.au/articles/news/underwaterwine