First there was the discovery of dozens of bottles of 200-year-old champagne, but now salvage divers have recovered what they believe to be the world's oldest beer, taking advertisers' notion of "drinkability" to another level.

Though the effort to lift the reserve of champagne had just ended, researchers last week uncovered a small collection of bottled beer from the same shipwreck south of the autonomous Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea.

"At the moment, we believe that these are by far the world's oldest bottles of beer," Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island's Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, told CNN on Friday via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands.

"It seems that we have not only salvaged the oldest champagne in the world, but also the oldest still-drinkable beer. The culture in the beer is still living."

The newest find came as divers unearthed bottles separate from the earlier champagne find. While lifting a few to the surface, one exploded from pressure. A dark fluid seeped from the broken bottle, which they realized was beer.

Juslin said the cold seawater was a perfect way to store the spirits, with the temperature remaining a near-constant 32 degrees Fahrenheit and no light to expedite spoiling.

Experts estimated the exclusive bubbly to be worth tens of thousands of dollars per bottle. The beer's value has not been determined. It's also unknown whether the beer went flat while sitting at the bottom of the Baltic.

Juslin said other artifacts were still lying in the shipwreck, about 160 feet deep between the Aland Island chain and Finland, but it would take several months to retrieve them.

All the cargo on the ship — including the beer and champagne — is believed to have been sent from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg, Russia, sometime between 1800 and 1830. It could have been intended for the Russian Imperial Court.

"Champagne of this kind was popular in high levels (of society) and was exclusive to rich groups," Juslin said. "It was not a drink for common people then."