TREASURE TROVE OF 19TH CENTURY CHAMPAGNE UNEARTHED

PARIS One of the world’s oldest champagne makers has just struck liquid gold. Pol Roger, the French champagne house whose wine was famous for being Sir Winston Churchill’s favourite tipple, has unearthed a treasure trove of bottles lost in the ruins of collapsed cellars for more than a century.

Experts say the 26 bottles so far recovered could still be drinkable, and that there may well be many more from the million or so lost at the time.

The fate of the bottles has been the stuff of “dreams and nightmares for generations of the family and cellar masters,” Laurent d’Harcourt, Pol Roger’s chief executive told The Daily Telegraph.