Wine experts Wednesday popped the corks of two bottles of champagne recently salvaged from the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

They had lain in a sunken ship for nearly 200 years, 50 meters below the surface in the waters south of Aaland, a Finnish-controlled archipelago of 6,500 islands.

On stage, they eased the fragile corks from the dark brown bottles — one from the house of Veuve-Clicquot and the other from the now extinct house of Juglar.

Three bottles of Chateau Lafite’s 1869 vintage each sold for a record price of HK$1.8 million ($230,000) at a sale in Hong Kong last saturday.

All three were bought by the same Asian telephone bidder, said Sotheby’s, which offered almost 2,000 bottles of Lafite shipped directly from the cellars of the chateau in Pauillac, near Bordeaux.

The 1869s – the oldest bottles in a range of vintages that spanned 139 years – were each estimated to sell for between HK$40,000 and HK$60,000.

George Lee’s “A Date with Wine” is a wine stopper with twist-able date rings to help you remember when you opened a bottle.

Researchers in India say they have developed a wine made from mangoes that they hope might one day compete with the traditional grape-based variety.

Scientists at the Central Institute of Subtropical Horticultural Research in Lucknow have produced wines using three types of mango native to the local state of Uttar Pradesh — the Dussehri, Langra, and Chausa.

India is the world’s largest mango producer and is home to nearly 1,000 varieties of the succulent and juicy fruit — something the researchers hope could be harnessed into a new drinks industry.

Austrian Airlines has topped a list of the best business class in-flight wines from US-based Global Traveler magazine.

It beat Qatar Airways by only 0.28 of a point to take the award, which the magazine said “was not dependent on one or two high-scoring blockbusters pulling the rest of its wines into the winner’s corner.”

Instead, the wines selected by Austrian’s 55 sommeliers scored consistantly highly across all categories, with its Champagne, both its white wines and one red wine all placed in the top ten lists for their respective categories.

Follow sailing ship the Bessie-Ellen online, as it transports 20,000 bottles of Château Smith Lafite and Château de Cayx Bordeaux to Montreal on July 21.

Château Smith Lafite and Château de Cayx are using a classic sailing ship to transport their vintages to North America.

The sailing ship being used, the 120-foot (36.5 meter) Bessie-Ellen was built in 1904 in Portsmouth, England, and is one of the last remaining vessels of its kind.