Christie’s Auction House is offering a bottle of space-aged wine, and it could be yours — if you’ve got a million bucks.
No, not “space-aged,” as in “futuristic”, but rather a bottle of 2000 Petrus that spent 14 months aboard the International Space Station. It was one of 12 bottles to make the trip.
This is the first time wine has traveled to the ISS and returned to Earth, “aging in a carefully monitored and controlled environment” high above the Earth, according to Christie’s.
The winning bidder will receive “The unique bottle of space-aged Pétrus…in a unique trunk, imagined and handcrafted by the Parisian Maison d’Arts Les Ateliers Victor, alongside a bottle of terrestrial Pétrus 2000, a decanter, glasses and a corkscrew made from a meteorite.”
Decanter‘s wine expert Jane Anson has sampled the orbital vino and says they do indeed taste different. “[T]his particular bottle seems more evolved than I would expect from a 21-year-old bottle of Petrus 2000,” Anson noted.
We assume by “evolved,” Anson doesn’t mean cosmic rays have somehow bestowed alien sentience to the red. Instead, Anson noted, “It is beautiful and nuanced, with fine tannins and a sense of energy, but has a clear difference in expression from the [earth] wine.”
The space-aging was part of a series of experiments undertaken by Space Cargo Unlimited, a European “New Space” start-up. Proceeds frrom the sale will fund future agricultural experiments in space.