(CNN) -- Divers are recovering bottles of champagne that have
been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two
centuries, an autonomous Finnish island official said Wednesday.
About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly
164 feet] south of the Aland Islands. "The first bottle was
brought to the surface in mid-July," Rainer Juslin, permanent
secretary of the island's ministry of education, science and
culture, told CNN via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of
the Aland islands. "We believe this is the oldest champagne in
the world." Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship
believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St
Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have
possibly been sent by France's King Louis XVI to the Russian
Imperial Court. "Champagne of this kind was popular in high
levels [of society] and was exclusive to rich groups -- it was
not a drink for common people then," Juslin said. Juslin said
some of the bottles already retrieved had some crac