03.10.2024

You may be familiar with cellaring wine in underground vaults or dark, cool rooms. But have you heard about submerging pallets of premium wine on the ocean floor?

Header photo: Russell Ord

In the wild converging oceans off the coast of Augusta, a six-metre swell has gathered. On the surface, a spectacular rolling of waves, and below, where vats cradling precious, fermenting cargo rock on their tethers, the southern hemisphere’s first subsea winery is stirring.

As winemakers turn their backs on heavy-handed interventions and seek to celebrate fruit-driven, organic and sustainable approaches to their art, a slowing of technological advancement and novelty has been a natural symptom of the trend. Rare Foods Australia, alongside French innovators Winereef International, are set to disrupt the market with a project that sees 300 litre vats of Margaret River Region wine submerged to undergo its secondary fermentation process.

With foundations in greenlip abalone, Rare Foods Australia has a unique ocean lease and professional divers that allow the use of the ocean floor, meaning vats are anchored to the seabed around 1.5 kilometres offshore “like balloons”. The usual manual stirring of residual yeast will be handled by the ocean, its currents, tantrums and whims, effectively keeping the lees in constant suspension throughout the process.

Rare Foods Australia hold a unique ocean lease. Photo: Supplied

Simon Hanley, winemaker and Rare Foods Australia’s Ocean Cellar General Manager is careful to point out, “There is a vast difference between subsea winemaking and ocean cellaring, which we have done successfully with our Ocean Signature range.”

For the latter, Rare Foods Australia first partnered with Karridale’s Glenarty Road to produce the Fathoms Cuvée, bottles of which are, for want of a better word, deeply ‘piratey’ in appearance, and extremely popular. Their salty immersion literally signs each bottle with a unique array of coralline algae and other oceanic biomatter.

As is the case with many great ideas, the concept of cellaring wine in the ocean was born accidentally. Ships wrecked with cargos of champagne had inadvertently begun an experimental process of resting wine at sea. When the bottles were eventually discovered, sometimes hundreds of years later, many were found perfectly intact and aged to perfection.

Recovering wine from the shipwreck graveyards of the ocean floor showed the environment to be a near-perfect wine cellar. The nature of the depth, void of light, constant temperature and pressure, and the consistent rocking motion are all performing activities usually handled manually or artificially controlled on land. Winemakers in Europe began tinkering with the concept early, and the now patented winemaking technology is being adopted here in Australia for the first time.

Ships wrecked with cargos of champagne had inadvertently begun an experimental process of resting wine at sea. Photo: Supplied

Fiona Edwards from Edwards Wines calls it an intensive cellaring process. Edwards has also partnered with Rare Foods Australia to sink bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay where the Indian and Southern oceans meet, Augusta.

“The Ocean Series upholds a kind of theme that resonates through Edwards. Land, sky and sea, it runs through our blood.” Fiona says, referring to founder Brian Edwards’ epic charity flight across the world in his Tiger Moth propeller aeroplane, ‘Matilda’. “Brian spent much of his flight over the water. The whole family surf and have always returned to that love of the ocean.”

The effects of the long months in the marine world are uncontrolled, left to nature’s desires. Bottles are brought back to the surface absolutely one of a kind, and the perfect gift for any maritime enthusiast, but what’s occurred inside is the real romance. Wines that return from their time as abalone ranch neighbours have been tasted side by side against the same vintage left cellared on dry land. Chardonnay was crisper, and more complex, and Cabernet Sauvignon tannins had softened. There’s even a question about whether there’s a hint of salinity, though firmly sealed and twice dipped in wax, that’s more likely the briny air in which the grapes flourished and grew.

Brian Edwards' Matilda can be found inside their cellar door. Photo: Russell Ord

Available for purchase at the Edwards cellar door, the beautifully ornate ocean aged wines have proven a popular gift and memento. Fiona muses that despite the wonderfully crafted liquid inside, it’s likely some of the bottles are never opened at all.

Glenarty Road 2022 Fathoms Cuvée is available for purchase from their online store with each bottle’s intensity of sea life encrustation unique and varied.

Of the imminent recovery of the first Flinders Bay subsea wines that have undergone secondary fermentation, Simon says, “The fruit is collaboratively gathered from local vineyards and the winemaking is essentially left to the mystery conditions of the ocean, and that is a true celebration of the region.” Bottled subsea wine will be available for sale and tasting at the Ocean Pantry in Augusta at the end of 2024.

Glenarty Road's piratey Fathoms Cuvée. Photo: supplied

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