What goes up must come down. Back in 2019 we reported on Space Cargo Unlimited shooting 12 bottles of an unnamed French red wine into space to โobserve the aging process of wine in microgravity.โ That wine, which spent a little over a year aboard the International Space Station, has returned back to earth, and you can buy a bottle of it for a cool million dollars.
As reported by AP News, the once unknown wine has been revealed to be a Pรฉtrus 2000, which earned a perfect 100 by the ghost of Robert Parker. Pรฉtrus being Pรฉtrus, this particular vintage already sells for upwards of $10,000 a bottle without going interstellar. But after spending a year in zero Gโs, the wine โknown for its complexity, silky, ripe tannins and flavors of black cherry, cigar box and leatherโ is expected to add a few zeros to the end of that price tag.
According to AP, Christieโs will auctioning off a bottle in a private sale that they expect to fetch โin the region of $1 million,โ per Tim Tiptree, international director of Christieโs wine and spirits department. Along with the space wine, the auction winner will receive โa bottle of terrestrial Pรฉtrus of the same vintage, a decanter, glasses, and a corkscrew crafted from a meteoriteโฆ all held in a hand-crafted wooden trunk with decoration inspired by science fiction pioneer Jules Verne and the โStar Trekโ universe.โ
And how does the wine taste relative to a regular ole bottle of 10K Pรฉtrus? Itโs hard to describe. No literally. Thatโs what the wine experts said. A taste test with 12 wine experts was conducted in March at the Institute for Wine and Vine Research in Bordeaux, and โthey noted a difference that was hard to describe.โ One expert stated that the earth version โtasted a bit younger, the space version slightly softer and more aromatic.โ Nothing like a little je ne sais quois to get a 100x modifier added to the price tag.
But before you go and start thinking this is a wine for the everyman, to chug a lug alongside reheated leftovers from your Tex-Mex carry out, this wine is more for the โwine connoisseurs, space buffs and the kind of wealthy people who collect โultimate experiences,โโ per the press release. Which for me is a total bummer because Iโm not any of those things.
Zac Cadwaladerย is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.
