A Ligurian wine maker is preparing to drop 6,200 bottles of spumante into the sea off the coast of Portofino where they will mature on the ocean floor in the world's first experiment of its kind.
Piero Lugano of the Cantina Bisson winery said the bottles will spend 18 months on the sea bed at a depth of 70 metres, a near-constant temperature of 15 degrees centigrade, and with an almost total absence of light.
Lugano said he got the idea from archaeological discoveries of ancient shipwrecks, where amphorae from the cargo are sometimes found intact despite the thousands of years that have passed.
''I started thinking about ancient Roman galleons and relics (on the ocean bed) and, especially, those amphorae that have been found filled with wine, the taste, colour and smell of which was unchanged,'' he told website Vino 24.
On Tuesday the winery began bottling 5,000 litres of spumante and loading the bottles into steel cages which will be dropped into the sea in front of the inlet of Cala dell'Oro, in the Portofino marine reserve.
One large 26-litre container will be auctioned off when the bottles are hauled back to the surface in 2010, with money raised going towards biological research at the marine reserve and local volunteer associations.
The name of the sea-bed spumante remains under wraps.
