An impressive operation took place this Sunday in Saint-Michel-en-Brenne (Indre).

300 bottles of Valençay wine were submerged four meters deep in a pond.

Among them, 150 bottles of red wine and 150 bottles of white wine.

The owners will take them out again in November 2022, reports France Bleu Berry.

The aim of this experiment is to observe, but also to taste, the possible effects of this immersion in fresh water on the wine.

A ceremony took place for the occasion in the presence of the gastronomic brotherhood of the Grands Escuyers de Gâtines.

Several experiments of the same type have already been carried out at sea or in the ocean.

In Saint-Michel-en-Brenne 300 bottles of Valençay wine are immersed in a lake where they will stay underwater for a year pic.twitter.com/9ZPOYXIkcx

- France Bleu Berry (@FB_Berry) September 12, 2021

"It's a way to make our business speak well"

It was the great master Hubert Sinson who inspired the idea for this project. The latter said he had already tried a test of immersion in fresh water, but not of this magnitude. “Theoretically, the wine ages much slower, it stays much fresher. He's in the dark, and then he's got no oxygen. We will do a comparative tasting between the witness I kept and what we put in the water, ”he explained.

The 300 bottles of Valençay are housed in the pond of Benoit Deloche, a 26-year-old fish farmer.

The latter did not hesitate a second to participate in this project.

"It's a way of making our business, which is so often the object of criticism in Brenne, speak for good," he said.

“We don't have wine growers in Brenne, but we do have fish farmers.

The fact of submerging a harvest, to age the wine, that seems to me to be a very good idea, because it can allow people to talk about ponds, fish farming, ”added Laurent Laroche, President of the Regional National Park. de la Brenne.

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