Oldest Ruinart Champagne Unearthed in Alsace

A cache of Great Depression-era bottles of Ruinart has been discovered in a private cellar in Alsace, making them the Champagne house's oldest-known bottles in existence.

The house’s chef de cave Frédéric Panaïotis traveled from Champagne to Alsace after receiving a message from a wine professional that he had two cases in his cellar.

"Late last year he called me and said he had two 24 bottles of 1929 Champagne Ruinart, so I was naturally pretty interested,"  Panaïotis told Wine Searcher.

The find is extra special for Ruinart, as its cellars were ransacked during World War II making it one of the few great producers with no library of wines. "We have nothing pre-1945," Panaïotis said. "So it's nice to have these."

The two dozen bottles are in good condition, with labels and foil intact, and high levels of wine in the bottle, he added.

"Some of them are in magnificent shape, full and clear and with gas. I don't need to get them verified – I know they are good. They haven't been moved since the 1930s."

Ruinart, which is part of LVMH and a sister company to Krug, Moët & Chandon and Dom Pérignon, is the oldest Champagne house, founded in 1729; thus, the unearthed bottles dated from the company's bicentenary year.

Following the 1929 harvest, a report by the grower-run publication La Champagne Viticole, reported that it had been "an abundant, quality harvest" and would go down in the history books as a great year. More than 80 years later, Champagne expert Richard Juhlin noted that it was "a very good vintage that has been forgotten next to 1928", which is regarded by many as vintage of the century.

The 1929 bottles are not the oldest Champagne in existence. Moët has bottles dating from the 1800s and, in 2010, a trove of 220-year-old Champagne from the house that became Veuve Clicquot was discovered in a shipwreck in the Baltic.

Panaïotis said he would open the bottles for the 300th anniversary of Ruinart – in 2029.