'Pongy' drinkable champagne opened after 50 years on sea bed

LONDON (AFP) - A group of British divers were celebrating their discovery of a stash of half century-old champagne on the bottom of the English Channel by uncorking a few bottles for a tasting.

The samples from around 20,000 half bottles discovered buried in silt in the hold of a sunken French cargo ship were described by experts as very drinkable, if somewhat "pongy" and with a slight aroma of fish.

The champagne was found by members of Folkestone Diving Club and other diving groups on the south coast of England, who have however refused to say where they located the freighter.

All they will say is that the bottles come from the wreck of a cargo ship called The Seine, which was en route for England when it sank after supposedly hitting a Russian freighter in July 1955.

Some of the champagne -- thought to date from around 1950 -- was uncorked at London's plush Dorchester Hotel Saturday.

It would be by no means to everyone's taste, said champagne expert Susie Barrie, one of the first tasters.

"Aged champagne is an acquired taste and often loses its fizz and this had lost most of its fizz. You either love it or hate it," she said.

"It has that lovely amber-gold colour and honeyed, mineral aromas like a mushroomy smell. None of it's unusual in old champagne. Some people would have smelled it and thought it was too pongy, but it really did taste absolutely fine.

"It certainly did not taste bad or spoiled, although there was just a hint of a fishy aroma and taste, but nothing major and it did not taste salty. You would not be able to tell it was from a shipwreck."