CROATIA (WFLA/NBC) – Wine aged in the waters of the Adriatic Sea is drawing attention far from where it is made in southern Europe.
A winemaker is aging red wine under the sea off the coast of Croatia, an environment the winemaker calls “ideal.”
The temperature is constant at 59 degrees.
The winemaker first put bottles around 65 feet below the sea surface with his partner in 2009 to see what would happen.
They had to solve problems of seawater getting into the bottles and the need to protect bottles from sunlight.
They did that with wax seals and encasing the bottles in vases known as amphoras, making them look like finds from a Roman shipwreck.
The amphoras are kept on the seafloor in cages for around two years.
The wine is served at a restaurant in the nearby city of Dubrovnik.
The restaurant’s sommelier says wines kept in the amphoras taste “smoother and [more] rounded.”
The winemakers are looking at taking their novel method of wine-making global, hoping to export to the rest of Europe, the United States and other parts of the world.