Sunken Champagne Auction in Finland Disappoints Organizers

A 200-year-old bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne found on the bottom of the Baltic fetched 15,000 euros ($18,600) on Friday in Finland, less than half what sale organizers had hoped.

"We are quite happy about the money raised although we expected a new world record," Rainer Juslin, an Aaland provincial government official, told Agence France Presse.

The Aaland government will meet to mull over the reasons why the world record was not reached, but "it is possible that the taste of the champagne does not justify the high price, because the champagne is not bubbly and quite sweet for modern tastes," he added.

In 2011 a bottle of Veuve Clicquot raised from the same shipwreck was auctioned for a record-setting 30,000 euros.

A total of 11 bottles of the world's oldest champagne were sold on Friday for 109,280 euros ($136,000), two years after being salvaged from the sea off Finland's autonomous island province of Aaland.

The wreck dating from between 1825 and 1830 contained 145 bottles from the distinguished champagne houses of Veuve Clicquot, Heidsieck & Co and the now-defunct house of Juglar.

Six bottles of Juglar, four bottles of Veuve Clicquot and one bottle of Heidsieck were auctioned Friday in the sale organized by French auction house Artcurial.

The profits generated will go to a variety of charitable causes.