Thanks to a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, we now know what 170-year-old champagne (kept in near perfect aging conditions) tastes like! Tasters described the aroma of the champagne - likely the oldest ever imbibed - as spicy, smoky, and leathery.
At 9% alcohol by volume, it was significantly less alcoholic than the modern version, which contains about 12% alcohol, likely due to a less efficient fermentation process. The researchers also found traces of chemicals from wood, suggesting that the champagne was fermented in barrels.
Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2015/04/what-does-170-year-old-champagne-taste?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebook
