What wine was on the Titanic?

The short answer: champagne was poured every evening on the Titanic, mostly in first class. The cargo manifest lists 63 cases of champagne supplied by F. B. Vandegrift & Co., alongside other wine bound for New York. Bottles of wine, beer, spirits and champagne still lie in the wreck's debris field, and unopened champagne bottles have been brought to the surface.

What the records show

• Champagne in the cargo hold: 63 cases on the cargo manifest, supplied by F. B. Vandegrift & Co., according to RMS Titanic, Inc., the company that salvages the wreck.
• Wine for New York: the manifest also lists wine shipped in hogsheads, large barrels, for Acker, Merrall & Condit, a New York wine merchant.
• Champagne every evening: RMS Titanic, Inc. says it was enjoyed each night of the voyage, primarily in first class.
• Bottles on the seabed: wine, beer, spirits and champagne bottles are among the dining provisions scattered across the debris field.

Why the bottles survived

You would expect a champagne bottle to burst under the pressure of the deep sea. Instead, as the bottles sank, seawater slowly entered them and the pressure inside and outside evened out, so many stayed whole.

Heidsieck: the champagne on board

VinePair reports that the Titanic carried a few cases of 1907 Heidsieck & Co Monopole Goût Américain for first-class passengers, and that bottles of it were among those recovered. Goût américain, “American taste”, meant a sweeter style of champagne, made for the American market of the time.

The other shipwreck champagne

The famous drinkable 1907 Heidsieck came from a different wreck. The Jönköping was torpedoed off the coast of Finland on 3 November 1916, and in 1998 Swedish divers found almost 3,000 bottles of 1907 Heidsieck in its hold, in remarkable condition. The two stories are often mixed up.

Can you drink Titanic champagne?

No one has tasted what remains of the Titanic's champagne, and RMS Titanic, Inc. believes it is no longer fit to drink. More than a century of seawater seeping in is not a cellar.

Was there a Titanic wine list?

I haven't found a surviving wine list from the Titanic's restaurants in the records I could check. The dinner menus that survive are about the food. What we know about the wine comes from the cargo manifest, the salvage and what the bottles themselves tell us.

Drink like 1912

Champagne in 1912 was often sweeter than today's Brut. For a taste of that style, try a Demi-Sec Champagne, ideally with dessert, and pour it into a white-wine glass rather than a flute. See the best wine glasses.

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