Want That Fancy Bottle Of Wine? Grab Your Wetsuit

So, there's this winery-bar in Croatia. Its owners are preparing a new experience for patrons, which will allow them to visit the wine cellar to pick their own bottle. The process will involve scuba gear.

Reuters reports that the two Croation bar owners first decided to store their wine in the Adriatic sea in 2009. It took them three years to perfect the practice, as sea water would leak into the bottles or sun would reach them, despite being stored at 65 feet beneath the surface of the Adriatic sea.

"We found a solution using wax and an appropriate cork. What was still missing was darkness. Then the idea of putting bottles in amphoras [tall clay pots with handles] came up. It worked," said Ivo Segovic, the wine producer in the partnership.

Beginning next year, they'll allow guests to dive with winery staff to select their bottle of wine from ol' Triton's kingdom, then swim upward clutching a boozy treasure snatched from the recesses of Davy Jones's locker.

The reason behind this unorthodox storage solution, besides it being a really good gimmick, is that the temperature of the Bay Of Mali Ston at that depth is roughly 59 degrees, which Segovic told Reuters is the ideal temperature at which to store red wine. The wine in question is called Mysterium, and it's aged for a total of three years before it's sold. About 700 days of those three years are spent on the sea floor. And as you might guess, it doesn't come cheap, setting back customers (divers?) 280 euros, or approximately 325 U.S. dollars.

It does sound tasty, though. Reuters spoke with sommelier Darko Dabic, who is based in nearby Dubrovnik, about the wine: "Because of the different way it's aged, the taste of the wine from the sea, compared to one kept in a cellar, is a bit smoother and rounded... It has somewhat less alcohol and carries the aroma of cherries and plums."

Segovic and partner Edi Bajurin's bar can be found "at their bar in the hamlet of Drace on the northern side of the Peljesac peninsula alongside locally produced cheese and prosciutto." If you're rich and want to drink some cool, sea-aged wine, take pictures, will you?