08.06.2010
Mission Accomplished: Divers Sink “RESSpekt"
Lending a helping hand can be a such a pleasure: On 8 June, under perfect summer skies and a crowd full of curiosity, Rheingau wine estate proprietor and hobby scuba diver Christian Ress met up with a team from the Wiesbaden diving school “Toni’s Dive Station” at a quarry pond in Diez on the Lahn River to afford 18 magnums (@ 1.5 liters each) and one Balthazar (@ 12 liters) of the Balthasar Ress top Riesling cuvée RESSpekt ideal aging conditions at the bottom of the pond. Experienced diving instructors Toni Eichler and Peter Schütz were in charge of the technically challenging maneuver. First, the wines were packed in steel boxes. The boxes – weighing between 3 and 40 kg (6.6 and 88.2 lbs) – were then attached to lift bags (inflated balloons) that enabled a team of six divers to move them over the water to the deepest point of the pond. Next, the air was carefully let out of the bags and the wines/boxes could be sunk 18 m/59 ft to their new underwater home. Once they reached the bottom of the pond, the boxes were secured with chains and padlocks. Finally, to ensure optimal security against theft or damage, a specially designed, 250-kg (551-lb) steel cage was placed over the boxes.
For the next three years, RESSpekt, a cuvée from the finest Riesling grapes of top Rüdesheimer Berg vineyards, will be able to mature at constant temperatures between 6 and 8°C (42.8 and 46.4°F), protected from UV rays and oxygen. Christian Ress: “We expect that this challenging and somewhat different storage possibility will provide our top Riesling cuvée with truly optimal conditions for aging.”
In addition to quality considerations, Christian Ress is committed to social causes. Ten of the eighteen magnums to be sunk were sold at auction via eBay, generating €1.261, twenty percent of which – ca. €250 – has gone to the South African project “Wine Helps,” organized by Stuart Pigott, the British, but Berlin-based, wine writer. Two magnums that have been sunk are still available for purchase via eBay (article nos. 180517537895 and 180517538281) – and will also contribute to this good cause.
Estate proprietor Ress is not the only one who anxiously awaits the salvage operation in the summer of 2013. Those who lent a helping hand by purchasing a magnum prior to the dive also look forward to the day when they can recover their “treasure” from the depths of the pond.
You’ll find many impressions of the event in our Fotogalerie. High-resolution illlustrations can be downloaded for reproduction here (no copyright fees for the press, but we would appreciate a file copy). Please click on Mediathek to view a video of the dive.
The Balthasar Ress teams thanks all who supported this event, particularly:
- Toni Eichler (Toni’s Dive Station in Wiesbaden, www.nicedive.de) and Peter Schütz (Tauchbasis am Diezer Baggersee, www.tauchschulebaggerseediez.de) for their professional and technical execution of this operation.
- Brigitte Kampf, lessee of Diez quarry pond, for permitting the pond to be used for this project.
- Joachim Giese (www.hdvdive.com) for producing the underwater images and the film documentation.
For additional information, please contact:
Balthasar Ress, Ute Schalberger
Zum Meerwald 4 • 66129 Saarbrücken
Tel +49 (0)6805/2070701
