Uncorking Another Era

One of the champagnes auctioned Thursday at Christie's in London had all the full-bodied taste of World War I, with a sparkle of sea-buried treasure and just a trace of a fearsome shipwreck.

It also had a price tag of $4,091 a bottle.

In a roomful of classic champagnes being sampled earlier this week by connoisseurs, this 1907 Heidsieck & Co. - aged and iced on the floor of the Baltic Sea - held its own.

"It's a drink fit for the gods," said Claes Bergvall, leader of a Swedish-Danish diving team that recovered the sparkling gold treasure from the floor of the Baltic Sea last year.

Twelve bottles of the bubbly netted a total of $61,700, a spokesman for Christie's said.

CBS News Senior European Correspondent Tom Fenton reports that 2,500 bottles of the 1907 champagne were salvaged in 1997 from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland. The treasure trove of liquid gold was aboard the Jonkoping when the ship was sunk by a German U-Boat during World War II.

The cargo - 5000 bottles of the champagne and 67 casks of cognac - was being shipped to the czar's army in Finland, then a Grand Duchy of Russia. The Germans apparently made off with some of the bottles.

The salvage team that raised the wreck nine decades later found the cache of 2,500 bottles of champagne and 17 barrels of Bisquit cognac. The cognac did not survive, but the champagne, with corks intact, did.

Most of it already has been sold through agents to clients across the world. They are said to include U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan.

The vintage had lost none of its fizz during its 91-year stay in the ice-cold sea. In fact, its aroma and taste seem to have mellowed over the years.

"It's the most wonderful glass of complex champagne; the taste goes on and on," said Christopher Burr, Christie's wine expert.

Experts say the champagne is a vintage similar to that carried on the Titanic. And, like the Titanic, this champagne offers the heady taste of upper-class life in a long-gone era.