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During construction work, the Pol Roger Champagne House recovered 20 intact bottles from the years 1887 to 1897 from a collapsed cellar foundation. In 1900, during an ice-cold and damp night, several walls of the production building in Épernay had collapsed, taking with them several other buildings and also causing the cellars to collapse. The force of the catastrophe was so violent that several streets in the neighbourhood were also badly damaged. Around 1.5 million filled bottles and over 500 crates were buried. Attempts to recover them by digging tunnels failed, as did attempts to save the cellars.
During the renovation of a filling and packaging hall on the site, the oenologist Dominic Petit and workers during drilling work came across a cellar cavity and recovered an intact, sealed champagne bottle. After further excavation work, they were able to recover 19 more historic bottles. Due to the wet weather, the salvage work had to be interrupted, but should soon be continued under safe conditions. What is to happen to the bottles has not yet been announced by Pol Roger.
(uka / Photo: Pol Roger)