Claim:

A video shows a bottle of wine retrieved from the Titanic wreckage that sold for $1.4 million at auction.

Rating:

On April 30, 2024, online users began virally sharing a video on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, with a rumor claiming the clip showed a bottle of wine recovered from the wreckage of the Titanic selling for $1.4 million at auction.

The video displayed a gentleman attired in a suit, carefully uncorking a bottle of wine encrusted with maritime organisms. Further footage revealed cases of wine allegedly retrieved from the unfortunate Titanic voyage, which hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank the following morning. This disaster led to the demise of approximately 1,500 passengers and crew members.

An exceedingly popular post of the video garnered nearly 7 million views. The TikTok user @momentsgang uploaded the clip on the 1st of May. The screen caption announced, “Original Sealed Bottle of Wine Retrieved from the Titanic Sold for $1.4M at Auction.” The actual originator of the video has yet to be confirmed by Snopes.

The TikTok user stated in the text accompanying the video that a bottle of wine salvaged from the Titanic was auctioned for an unprecedented $1.4 million. “The Oceanic Reserve Champagne, by ‘Maritime Vineyards,’ is one of the few undamaged bottles recovered from the wreckage, transforming it into a sought-after historical artifact. The sale highlights the endless fascination with the Titanic tragedy and the value attached to its memory.”

The authenticity of this rumour has been rated “Miscaptioned” by Snopes. While the video was genuine and undistorted, it did not feature a bottle of wine salvaged from the Titanic being auctioned for $1.4 million. No news articles explicating such auctions could be found. Additionally, a Google search of “Oceanic Reserve Champagne” and “Maritime Vineyards” yielded no productive results—signifying that these were not valid product or company denominations.

Our extensive online search for the origins of the video — including performing reverse-image searches for various frames in the clip — initially produced no helpful answers. Then, we spotted a link in Google search results leading us to the truth.

The banner behind the man in the viral video matched the design of a bottle of SSN01 Classic from the award-winning Seafloor Storage No.1 wine company in Yantai, China. According to seafloorstoragewine.net, the wine-making process includes “six months of oak aging followed by 12 months of undersea storage” at an ocean depth of 18 meters (59 feet). The website also mentioned that Golden Times Winery supplies the grapes for the wine and limits annual production to 50,000 bottles. We reached out to the company via its contact form on the website but did not yet receive a response.

A comparison of the banner behind the unidentified man opening wine in the video next to the website for the Seafloor Storage No. 1 wine company.

We have so far been unable to locate the names of the people who appeared in the video, nor were we able to find when and where the event depicted occurred. The Seafloor Storage No.1 wine company’s website features only two blog articles from 2019 and 2020, both describing a China SeaFloor Storage Wine Culture Festival.

Aside from the rumor about the video, ocean explorers truly discovered champagne bottles with corks intact at the final resting site of Titanic, according to a 1994 article published by the British newspaper Evening Sentinel.

A genuine, still-sealed bottle of champagne was photographed in 2006 at “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.”

French scientist Jean-Louis Michel and Marine geologist Robert Ballard led the joint French-American expedition that discovered the wreckage in 1985. The remains of the Titanic were found about 350 miles from Newfoundland and around 12,500 feet deep in the North Atlantic.

On July 19, 1986, UPI reported, “Ballard said the minisub’s three-man crew discovered other artifacts, including champagne bottles that were being readied for a toast when an iceberg tore a hole in the Titanic.”

For further reading about the Chinese wine company, we recommend an article from the Chinese-language website cnmjz.com and two stories from min.news.

In 2018, BusinessWorld published an unproven rumor about “a rich Asian collector” purportedly once buying six bottles of champagne recovered from the Titanic wreckage.

On Sept. 19, 1985 — just after the joint expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic — Chicago Tribune reported an article that provided some details and perspective about the wine and champagne bottles that were on the ship when it sank.

Note: Translations with Google Translate sometimes produce errors. Some websites also referred to the Chinese-made wine as “Haizang No. 1” from the “Yantai Age Wine Co., Ltd.”

Bennett, Will. “Davy Jones’ Locker Proves the Perfect Champagne Cellar.” Sydney Morning Herald via The Telegraph London via Newspapers.com, 9 Sept. 1998, p. 16, https://www.newspapers.com/image/119678535/.

Broad, William J., and Catherine Porter. “A Diver Feared the Titan Sub, but Couldn’t Resist the Titanic.” The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/science/paul-henri-nargeolet-titanic-titan-submersible.html.

“First Videotapes of Titanic Give Glimpse of Thousands of Artifacts.” Richmond Times-Dispatch via UPI, 19 July 1986, p. A-2, https://www.newspapers.com/image/830960094/.

Gibbons, Dianne. “A ‘Museum’ the Size of London.” Evening Sentinel via Newspapers.com, 13 Oct. 1994, p. 30, https://www.newspapers.com/image/808442200/.

Google Translate. https://translate.google.com/.

“Haizang No. 1 Won the Annual Innovation Award at the Second Domestic Wine Industry and Commerce Summit.” Cnmjz.com, 6 Apr. 2021, http://www.cnmjz.com/n/6084.html.

Nicolas, Jino. “The Titanic and Underwater Wine Aging.” BusinessWorld Online, 17 Jan. 2018, https://www.bworldonline.com/arts-and-leisure/2018/01/18/110381/titanic-underwater-wine-aging/.

O’Kane, Caitlin. See Maps of Where the Titanic Sank and How Deep the Wreckage Is amid Search for Missing Sub – CBS News. 20 June 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-where-did-the-titanic-sink-wreckage-location-depth-missing-submarine/.

“R.M.S Titanic.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://www.noaa.gov/rms-titanic.

Seafloor Storage No. 1. https://seafloorstoragewine.net.

“Sesfloor Storage No.1 2019.” Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, 2021, https://resultats.concoursmondial.com/en/results/2021/170109-sesfloor-storage-no1-2019.

Titanic | History, Sinking, Rescue, Survivors, Movies, & Facts. Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Titanic.

“Titanic Exhibit Visits Memphis.” Travel Weekly, 13 Apr. 1997, https://www.travelweekly.com/Destinations2001-2007/Titanic-Exhibit-Visits-Memphis.

“Wine Lovers Thirsting for Titanic’s Treasure.” Chicago Tribune, 19 Sept. 1985, https://www.chicagotribune.com/1985/09/19/wine-lovers-thirsting-for-titanics-treasure/.

Yuchen, Zhang. “Not All Wine Can Be Called Haizang Wine.” iMedia, https://min.news/en/food/0529b8af45c9e20a029cafecf3a1817f.html.

—. “Will Sea Wine Become the next Trend?” iMedia, min.news/en/food/2c7071710d9b1c92b5bef43c46eefbc1.html.