Wine aging under the sea may sound like an unusual practice, but for several years it has been applied in different regions of Spain and in other countries around the world. And now a project plans to implement this innovative form of maturation in the waters of Ibiza in the Mediterranean Sea.
This technique arose from fortuitous discoveries: bottles found in old shipwrecks that, when rescued and analyzed by specialists, were surprisingly well preserved. Based on these findings, several wineries decided to experiment with underwater aging, seeking to reproduce under the sea the conditions that seemed to have protected and improved those submerged wines for decades.
Underwater wine aging -a technique that consists of submerging bottles or barrels at different depths- has found followers in Spain, France, Italy, Chile, Croatia, Greece, the United States, Australia and other countries, which have developed both commercial and experimental projects.
The principle of this practice is to take advantage of the marine environment to accelerate or modify wine aging.
The determining factors include hydrostatic pressure, total darkness, the gentle movement of currents and the absence of atmospheric oxygen, conditions that, according to those leading these initiatives, result in fresher, rounder wines with silky texture and distinctive mineral and saline profiles.
Spain, pioneer in “underwater wine”.
With almost twenty active projects on its coasts, Spain is one of the countries that has developed this technique the most.
The Crusoe Treasure winery, located in the Bay of Plentzia (Biscay), was one of the first in the world to have a legal concession and sanitary registration.
Its underwater cellar, at a depth of 20 meters, is part of a 500 m² artificial reef that houses more than 1,000 species, turning the site into a space for marine breeding and research at the same time.
Crusoe Treasure has produced more than 8,000 bottles since 2010 and also experiments with other products such as beers, cavas, rum and whiskey. Its wines have “very intense aromas from the corkage, silky texture and a characteristic saline-mineral touch”.
In addition, they collaborate with universities to study marine climate change, combining oenology with environmental R&D.
In the eastern Cantabrian Sea, the Marevinum winery immerses its wines in the Tina Mayor estuary (Asturias), and extracts them covered with barnacles, sponges and corals, which give each bottle a unique appearance.
The Bodega BH SL, which promotes the project in the Pitiusa, also has its wine buoy management in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a French commune, located in the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the region of New Aquitaine on the shores of the Bay of Biscay.
This is an underwater white wine with 10.5% alcohol content. The Atlantic blend of coastal vineyards is characterized by the following aromas:nori seaweed, iodine, quince, chamomile and sea crab”.
On the other hand, it is worth mentioning the Bodega Submarina del Mediterráneoin Cabo de las Huertas (Alicante), which works together with the University of Alicante to scientifically monitor depth, time and temperature. depth, time and temperature during the aging of more than 30,000 bottles per year.
Each year the bottles are submerged for 12 months of underwater aging, leaving 10% of the production on land for comparative evolution studies.
Italy and France: sparkling wines and science
In Italy, the most prominent project is Abissi, a sparkling wine from winemaker Piero Lugano (Bisson), which has been aged at a depth of 40 meters in the Ligurian Sea since 2009.
To this end, he developed a steel-coated stopper capable of resisting salt corrosion. Its success has inspired other wineries, such as Akènta Sub in Sardinia or Tenuta del Paguro in the Adriatic.
In France, following the 2010 discovery of 1840s champagne bottles in the Baltic Sea, Veuve Clicquot initiated the Cellar in the Sea experiment, submerging bottles in the Åland Islands for decades.
Château Larrivet Haut-Brion, in Bordeaux, aged a 56-liter barrel under the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in a wine with lower alcohol content and saline nuances. In the French Basque Country, the Egiategia project goes further and directly carries out underwater fermentation in tanks at a depth of 15 meters.
America: between innovation and marketing
Chile has been another pioneer in the American continent. Viña Casanueva, with its Cavas Submarinas brand, submerged its first harvest in 2005 in the Zapallar Bay.
Today it offers tourist experiences where visitors dive into a padlocked underwater chest, retrieve a bottle and taste it on the surface. In just a few years, the brand has positioned itself in a dozen countries, driven by the mythological story that fuses sea, wine and adventure.
In the United States, Mira Winery submerged a batch of Cabernet Sauvignon in South Carolina in 2013, describing the changes as “mysterious improvements.”
At the other end of the country, the ambitious Ocean Fathoms project in California was shut down for lack of permits; its 2,000 bottles were destroyed. Despite its failure, it brought the legality and sustainability debate to the table.
The largest underwater cellar
In Croatia, the Coral Wine project offers the largest underwater wine cellar in the world, with more than 10,000 bottles from 50 wineries from all over Europe in a space between corals and marine fauna.
In Greece, Gaïa Wines has been keeping its Thalassitis Submerged wine at 25 meters in the Aegean Sea since 2015. Australia has launched its first underwater sparkling wine from an abalone farm, and South Africa has even simulated the marine environment on land by introducing barrels in water tanks.
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