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Gordon Ramsay wine director Emanuel Pesqueira likes to live life at full speed – he runs marathons and skydives in his spare time. He is also a certified dive master, meaning he is among the diving elite – something that has come in handy when creating the world’s first wine pairing menu dedicated to wines aged in the Atlantic Ocean.
This menu of six underwater Portuguese wines is served exclusively at 1890Ramsay’s Michelin-starred restaurant at London’s Savoy Hotel (£275). It’s served to the table from bottles studded with tiny crustaceans, coral fronds and barnacles. “We did it for fun at first,” says Pesqueira, who pours each bottle himself, “but it’s proved so popular that we’re now blending our own wines to age underwater.” The first production, which included a sparkling white blend, a Touriga Nacional and a delicious Moscatel rosé, were all from Quinta Brejinho. But in the future there are plans to work with producers as far afield as California.
The wines are initially matured in a traditional cellar and then aged for another 12 to 24 months in the waters off Sines, a coastal town two hours south of Lisbon, in metal cages that are anchored at depths ranging from 10 to 50 metres. “There is no direct light down there and there is constant movement of the sea, so the wine rocks like a baby – this gives the sparkling wine super-refined and very elegant bubbles,” says Pesqueira. “As you go deeper, the pressure on the outside of the bottle increases, which we believe can result in slower, more consistent maturation.”
Underwater aging is a niche, but growing trend among wine producers. The innovative Champagne house More draped Drappier has been ageing a selection of his cuvées at 30-40 metres depth in the English Channel for the past few years. “It’s almost completely dark with a temperature of 11-13ºC, very similar to our cellars,” says Michel Drappier. “What’s different is the pressure, which is about four times that at sea level. After two years, the level of dissolved CO2 in the underwater Champagne is about 10 per cent higher. We’re only at the beginning of this experiment, but I already find it fresher and more integrated.” I blind-tasted an early version of his Brut Nature aged on land and at sea, and the latter was noticeably more sherbet and brighter, with a finer texture. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can buy the pair in a special limited edition called Drappier Brut Nature Immersion (€248, enviedechamp.com).
Drappier Brut Nature Champagne aged at sea, €248 (part of the set), enviedechamp.com
Leclerc Briant Abyss Rosé Champagne, €330, enviedechamp.com
The most famous example of wine aged underwater is Leclerc Briant‘s Abyss, a biodynamic Brut Nature Champagne aged for 10 to 12 months at a depth of 60 metres off the coast of Brittany. For Hervé Jestin, cellar master at Leclerc Briant, it represents a “natural continuation of our biodynamic approach: letting the wine spend a year in a living universe.” The bottles are immersed by Amphoris’ deep-sea ageing experts at the point where the English Channel and the Atlantic converge, producing a tempestuous mass of water that imbues the wine, says Jestin, with “a heightened level of energy.”
This may sound a little odd, but there’s definitely a dynamism to the recently released Abyss 2018. It’s sharp but fresh, with notes of lemon and apple, and hints of salty oyster shell – the one I tried even had a tiny ossified crab still attached to the outside (£160, en:bbr.com).
There are some still wines aged underwater (apart from those on the 1890 list), such as Attis Mar Albariño from Attis Bodega in Rias Baixas, Spain (£99.95, finewinedirect.co.uk). Podere San Cristoforo, in Tuscany, produces a Petit Verdot aged at the bottom of the sea in amphorae (€240, powersancristoforo.it). But the impact of deep ageing is, for obvious reasons, perhaps most readily seen in sparkling wines. English producer Exton Park in Hampshire recently released a limited-edition box containing two bottles of its 2014 Exton Park Blanc de Blancs – one aged on land, the other aged 60 metres down in the English Channel. I tasted both blind and found the sea-aged cuvée to be more immediate and expressive (Exton Park 60 Above & 60 Below, £225). The next sea-aged release will be a 2014 Blanc de Noirs in 2025; Exton Park also has some of its very nice Pinot Meunier Rosé submerged. So, next time you cross the Channel, keep an eye out for vinous treasures.