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Researchers Send Liquor to Space and Create World’s First Space-Aged Wine, Note Difference in Taste and Color

Bottles of wine were sent to the International Space Station in the name of science. They came back costlier and with added aroma and taste.

BY SOMDATTA MAITY

UPDATED 7 DAYS AGO

Two Clear Wine Glasses (Representative Cover Image Source: Pexels | Photo by AS Photography)

Space pursuit has moved on considerably from human steps to an entire station. Humans have taken many things with them to the world beyond. A startup called Space Cargo Unlimited added another item to that list in 2021, according to Interesting Engineering.

Wine bottle (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Markus Spiske)

The company sent 12 wine bottles to the International Space Station, orbiting in space. The bottles were then made to undergo a series of controlled experiments, which went on for 14 months in total. This collection was the first of its kind, as they were the first bunch to be aged in space.

Space Cargo's objective was to understand how space travel impacted wine aging, according to CNBC. After the bottles came back, a group of wine experts and oenologists arrived at the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences in Bordeaux to conduct a taste test on some of the space-aged Pétrus 2000 bottles. They found distinct differences in terms of taste, color, and aroma between the space variety and Earth variety of the same brand. The Earth specimens had also been aged for 14 months, as part of the experiment.

Jane Anson, one of the panelists, claimed that the space age wines tasted as if they had been aged two to three years more than their Earth counterparts. Christie's Auction House, which was about to sell one of the wine bottles, shared that the space age variety's flavor was somewhat like rose petals. The organization further added that the space wine gave out the smell of cured leather or a campfire. The panel also noted a burnt-orange luster in the variety's appearance.

Space biologist Michael Labert claimed that the difference in taste was because of a process called convection, stated Euronews. He explained that the process facilitates wine aging on Earth, but does not take place in space. "Under normal conditions on Earth, on the ground, we have a limited supply of oxygen, but we have always had convection, and this convection works in a way that it's mixing around the oxygen. So it's almost all the time the same oxygen concentration. And this gives them ways to all kinds of chemical reactions, which result in aging, which results in oxidization, oxidizing substances which change the taste," Labert added.

The wine bottles were not alone in their space voyage, they were accompanied by grapevines. Researchers were stunned not only by the survival of the vines but also by their expedited growth in space. After the vines came back to earth, they began flowering in a matter of three to four weeks.

One of the Pétrus 2000 bottles was put on sale in 2021 by Christie's auction house, according to CNBC. Officials estimated that the wine would be sold for around one million. Auction house shared that the bottle would come with a custom trunk, made by the Maison d’Arts Les Ateliers Victor. The set would also include a corkscrew crafted out of a meteorite, keeping with the space theme. If the wine fetched that price, it would become the most expensive wine ever sold at an auction. All the proceeds from the auction had been promised to future space missions and research into the impact of zero-gravity and low-gravity conditions on agriculture. There is no confirmation whether the wine was sold at that price.