Civil War Era Wine Voted a Loser

March 9, 2015 – An intact bottle of wine that was found on a shipwreck off Bermuda dating back to 1864 was opened and tasted recently as a part of the Charleston, S.C. Wine and Food Festival.  But sadly, unlike the Champagne from1839 found on a wreck in the Baltic Sea, it didn’t taste so good.

The tasting panel sipped the wine in front of about 50 wine enthusiasts who bought tickets to the event.  The consensus was it tasted like seawater, gasoline, vinegar and other undesirable flavors.  The alcohol content was high at 37 percent, which could indicate that it was a fortified wine, perhaps of Spanish origin, or it was a spirit or even a medicine.

The ship, the Mary-Celestia, an iron-hulled sidewheel steamship, was running a blockade with supplies for the Confederate states during the Civil War when it struck a reef and sank in six minutes, although some think the sinking may have been deliberate rather than accidental. The first bottle was found in 2011.  Subsequent dives located more bottles along with sealed perfume bottles, women’s shoes, hairbrushes and buttons.

There’s no mention about what will happen to the other four or five bottles but surely there are collectors who would pay a big price to have such a historic bottle in their collection