But a group of French wine connoisseurs has detected a bit of star dust in their latest tasting, after becoming the first people in the world to taste and review the wine that spent a year in space.
What does cosmic wine taste like?
“I found a difference in both color and aromatics and also in taste,” wine writer Jane Anson told CNN on Thursday.
“It just felt a little older, a little more evolved than the wine that had been left on Earth,” he said, adding that the tannins in the cosmic wine were more evolved and had a more floral character.
The group of experts tasted the wine along with another glass of the same variety that had remained on Earth, before telling him what it was.
And Anson concluded that his adventure above the stratosphere added to the drink about two or three years of maturity.
Organizers chose a popular 2000 Merlot for the project.
Philippe Lopez / AFP / Getty Images
“It’s definitely not everyday that you’re asked to try a wine that has been in space,” Anson said. “If you took it tonight, probably what had been in the space would be a little more prepared to drink. It was a little more open,” he said.
Chateau Petrus is the most famous winery in Pomerol, a village in Bordeaux known for its Merlot production.
Anson explained that the organizers chose a 2000 bottle because it is popular with drinkers and has proven to be a good vintage, meaning there were plenty of tasting notes to compare to the cosmic version.
A regular bottle of the harvest that would inhabit the Earth would cost approximately $ 6,000.
Wines and vines left Earth in two shipments in November 2019 and March 2020 and landed on our planet again near Cape Canaveral, Florida, in January.
They are now being analyzed to see how they have changed during their time in space, where the effects of microgravity and exposure to higher-than-Earth radiation accelerate genetic changes. Scientists will compare the vines with specimens left on Earth, with the goal of adapting the vines to grow in harsher environments.
Philippe Darriet, project organizer and director of the Institute of Vine, Science and Wine of the Oenology Research Unit, told CNN that for 14 months, the wine was “in different aging conditions” than in the earth.
“The question we asked ourselves was, Did these aroma-giving components, the flavor-giving components, evolve differently when the wine was in space?”
A total of 12 bottles were sent, of which only one was tasted. The others will now be further analyzed, he added.
And Darriet also wants to see analysis of the vines that were sent next to the bottles. “Perhaps this type of work will allow us in the future to have plants that acquire different adaptive properties in relation to the problems of climate change,” he said.
CNN’s Jack Guy contributed to this report.