A thousand bottles of Barolo have just spent a year at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and the only place you can drink them is on a Norwegian cruise ship.
Hurtigruten, the line best known for sailing the fjord-laced coast of Norway, teamed up with Italian winery Rivetto to sink 1,002 bottles of Barolo 34 metres down off the coast of Kirkenes, at 70 degrees north. There the wine sat for 12 months in near-total darkness, at a steady five to six degrees Celsius and under roughly four bar of pressure - conditions you simply can't replicate in a cellar.
The wine itself is no supermarket drop. Rivetto is a certified organic and biodynamic estate in Serralunga d'Alba, in the heart of the Barolo region, and the bottles had already done their traditional maturation, including 24 months in large oak casks, before taking the plunge.
So what does sea-aged Barolo actually taste like? At the first blind-style comparison, led by Henrik Dahl Jahnsen, president of the Norwegian Sommelier Association, the underwater bottle went up against the same wine aged on land. His verdict: the Arctic version showed a brighter, younger ruby colour and a fresher, more precise nose of wild fruits and flowers, with tannins he described as fresher and "crunchier" - essentially a more youthful expression of a wine famous for being brooding and serious.
The recovered bottles now debut as "Arctic barolo", served exclusively across Hurtigruten's fleet on the Norwegian coastal route. Tani Gurra, the line's front of house and beverage director, admits the idea sounds bizarre - but that curiosity is the point, and there's a neat synergy in sipping a wine that spent a year in the very waters you're sailing through.
Why should this matter to you? Partly it's a good excuse: Hurtigruten's coastal voyage is one of Europe's great slow-travel experiences, threading past the Lofoten Islands, the Arctic Circle and the far-northern ports most visitors never reach, and this gives onboard dining an unusual story to match the scenery. Partly it's simply one of the more charming experiments in wine tourism lately - and a reminder that extreme-latitudes cruising is increasingly about experiences you can't get anywhere else, from king crab safaris in Kirkenes to northern lights sightings in winter.
If you're tempted, the practical bit: Arctic barolo is fleet-wide but exclusive to Hurtigruten sailings, so you'll need to book the Norwegian coastal voyage rather than expect to find it in shops or restaurants. Budget for it as a special-occasion bottle rather than a nightly glass, and if wine is your thing, ask when it was retrieved - early tastings should be the freshest expression of what the sommeliers praised.
A glass raised, then, to weird ideas done properly - 34 metres down, at 70 degrees north.
Story via The Independent Travel