A bottle of Guinness pulled from a 19th-century shipwreck is offering scientists something far rarer than an old drink. It may preserve a small piece of brewing history inside a sealed glass container. The bottle was recovered from the Mindoro , a British sailing barque that sank in the English Channel on November 27, 1864, during the reign of Queen Victoria. If its contents remain chemically intact, researchers could get an unusual glimpse of how Guinness was made and tasted more than a century and a half ago. The discovery was made by diver Stefan Panis while exploring the wreck with a friend. The Mindoro is not a static archaeological site.
That label immediately changed the significance of the find. The Mindoro sank in 1864, meaning the bottle could have spent roughly 162 years beneath the sea before being recovered. Panis had not realized Guinness had a brewing history extending back that far. He shared the discovery with fellow diver and researcher Pawel Truszynski, who recognized that the bottle might contain more than an unusual souvenir. A sealed bottle could preserve chemical clues about an extinct version of a familiar beer.
