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 “observe the aging process of wine in microgravity.” 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 Pétrus 2000, which earned a perfect 100 by the ghost of Robert Parker. Pétrus being Pétrus, this particular vintage already sells for upwards of $10,000 a bottle without going interstellar. But after spending a year in zero G’s, the wine “known for its complexity, silky, ripe tannins and flavors of black cherry, cigar box and leather” is expected to add a few zeros to the end of that price tag.
According to AP, Christie’s will auctioning off a bottle in a private sale that they expect to fetch “in the region of $1 million,” per Tim Tiptree, international director of Christie’s wine and spirits department. Along with the space wine, the auction winner will receive “a bottle of terrestrial Pétrus of the same vintage, a decanter, glasses, and a corkscrew crafted from a meteorite… all held in a hand-crafted wooden trunk with decoration inspired by science fiction pioneer Jules Verne and the ‘Star Trek’ universe.”
And how does the wine taste relative to a regular ole bottle of 10K Pétrus? It’s hard to describe. No literally. That’s 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 “they noted a difference that was hard to describe.” One expert stated that the earth version “tasted a bit younger, the space version slightly softer and more aromatic.” 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 “wine connoisseurs, space buffs and the kind of wealthy people who collect ‘ultimate experiences,’” per the press release. Which for me is a total bummer because I’m not any of those things.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
