Buried treasure: the story of a century-old Champagne stash
The extraordinary tale of a stash of Champagne that was lost in 1900, found in 2018, and tasted this month – brought to you in pictures.
Pol Roger lost as many as 1.5m bottles of Champagne – representing around half its stock at the time – after a period of heavy rain caused its underground cellars to cave in during the night on 23 February 1900, burying the fizz in wet chalk and clay.
Both levels of Pol Roger’s facility on the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay were brought down, while part of its historic cellars caved in. Because it was the middle of the night, no-one was hurt, although Maurice Roger – son of the brand’s founder, Pol Roger – heard the collapse, and said it sounded as though two trains had collided.
Then, almost 120 years later, on 15 January 2018, while Pol Roger was beginning the process of building a new packaging facility above the site of the collapsed cellars, the producer discovered a void, filled with broken glass.
Over the course of several days of careful digging, Pol Roger found 23 in-tact bottles.
Some of which were still full.
Pol Roger’s new cellar master Damien Cambres was delighted by the discovery.
But even more excited was outgoing cellar master Dominique Petit, who had dreamed of finding this buried stash of Pol Roger since he joined the house in 1999.
Fifth generation of the Pol Roger family, Hubert de Billy, expressed his mixed feelings about the find. “We are very proud, but it was a dream, a story that the family like to tell, and now it is a fact,” he told db.
The wines were carefully removed, and sealed with wax.
However, rains then forced the excavations to stop, as the historic cellars 25m below the ground began to fill with water, before resuming digging again in December the same year, and yielding as many as 100 bottles, although not all of these contained the correct level of Champagne.
Then, on 15 January this year, the void caved in, proving the unstable nature of the historic cellars, and forcing the digging to cease for the foreseeable future.
On Thursday 10 October db was present as the Champagne house of Pol Roger pulled the first corks from its extraordinary discovery.
Having entered the historic cellars, db made its way through long tunnels…
Until reaching a locked gate, which was opened by Pol Roger CEO, Laurent d’Harcourt.
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The floor was thick with wet clay and chalk.
But this was as far as db could go, despite the modern reinforcements.
Now it was time to try the finds, which were brought up to Pol Roger’s disgorging room.
Damien Cambres inspected the first bottle.
Before Francis, who heads up the disgorging line, began the slow process of extracting the cork from the 120 year old bottle – which took around 20 minutes.
Thankfully, the wine was in good condition considering its age.
Back up to the maison, it was time to taste the bottles.
As one would expect, the wine was a deep amber colour, like aged Cognac.
Hubert de Billy (left) and Laurent d’Harcourt sampled the wines with db, with d’Harcourt admitting that the exercise was risky, as the wine could have been unpalatable. “You are guinea pigs,” he joked.
But both wines were in remarkable condition considering they most likely hailed from the late 1890s, and had been on their original corks for around 120 years.
And you can read my analysis of their taste and composition by clicking here.
It’s not just historic Champagne that’s stashed in Pol Roger’s facilities. Among the racks of Champagne is this Dodge pick-up, bought by the producer in 1944 after the Americans liberated Epernay, and then used for bringing in the harvest, before being left here, where it has stayed for 60 years. Restoring it will be the next project for Pol Roger.
