Many moons ago, just after we’d started the blog (so like nine years ago!) we wrote an entry about a new project that had just gotten started to try aging wine underwater in Plentzia Harbor, an offshoot of the Bay of Biscay.

What was getting started was an experiment being carried out by the Plentzia Underwater Beverage Aging Laboratory (LSEB Plentzia) along with the collaboration of beverage producers and bottlers, so there was quite a bit of interest in it.

And that interest from 2010 has turned into a working, profitable reality: Crusoe Treasure has become the first underwater bodega/artificial reef in the world, with more than ten years’ experience researching the aging of wine in an underwater environment.  Its success is already drawing imitators.

Representación de la bodega submarina Crusoe Treasure
Representation of Crusoe Treasure’s underwater bodega

In December 2019, the first Underwater Wine Congress was held, and more than fifty guests, including experts, winemakers, and oenologists, were in attendance, and they celebrated on horseback between the Itsasmuseum and the Plentzia Center for Experimental Marine Biology and Biotechnology (which was inaugurated just a few months after the LSEB Plentzia project got started).

Just a few days ago, Fox News published an excellent article by Graham Keeley discussing the bodega, its features, its way of working, its products, and its wine tourism side.

We would have appreciated it if Fox had called the part of the Atlantic Ocean bordering the Basque Coast, into which the Bay of Plentzia empties into, by the name it is internationally known by: the Bay of Biscay.

We’ll leave you with the article about the Congress and the Fox News article.

Decanter – 20/12/2019 – Great Britain

First underwater wine congress celebrated in Bilbao

More than 50 guests, including experts, oenologists and winemakers, attended the Underwater Wine Congress held at the Itsasmuseum, Bilbao’s naval history centre, on 12 and 13 December. They discussed wine inadvertently aged for centuries in sunken ships and listened to winemakers talking about the process and challenges of submerging wine in the sea today.

(Follow) (Automatic translation)

FOX News – 26/1/2020 -USA

Spanish winery submerges bottles underwater in twist to the aging process

Dressed in a wet suit, Borja Saracho jumps over the side of the Crusoe Treasure to check how thousands of bottles of wine are doing in the murky waters of the Cantabrian Sea off northern Spain. It is just an average day at the office for the founder of a very unusual Spanish winery.

(Follow) (Automatic translation)

Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country


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