A group of divers exploring a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea have found bottles containing what is thought to be the oldest drinkable champagne in the world, made in the late 18th century. "I picked up one champagne bottle just so we could find the age of the wreck," diver Christian Ekstrom from Aland, off Sweden, said yesterday.

Ekstrom and his Swedish diving colleagues opened the bottle and tasted the contents.

"It was fantastic... it had a very sweet taste, you could taste oak and it had a very strong tobacco smell. And there were very small bubbles," he said.

"We are 98% sure that it is Veuve Clicquot and that it was probably [made] between 1772 and 1785," Ekstrom said.

Richard Juhlin, a Swedish champagne specialist, said if the champagne was from the late 18th century, it could cost around 500,000 Swedish krona (€53,000) a bottle.