BORDEAUX, France (AP): It has a rose petal flavor. It smells like bonfire. It shines with a burnt orange hue. What is? A 5,000 euro bottle of Petrus Pomerol wine that spent a year in space.
Bordeaux researchers are analyzing a dozen bottles of the precious liquid, along with 320 fragments of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon vines, which returned to Earth in January after a stay aboard the International Space Station..
They announced their preliminary impressions on Wednesday: mainly, weightlessness did not ruin the wine and seemed to energize the vineyards.
Organizers say it is part of a long-term effort to make Earth’s plants more resistant to climate change and disease by exposing them to new stresses and to better understand the aging process, fermentation and wine bubbles.
In a unique tasting this month, 12 connoisseurs tasted one of the wines traveled through the space, tasting it blindly next to a bottle of the same vintage that had been left in a cellar.
A special pressure device delicately capped the bottles at the Bordeaux Wine and Vine Research Institute. The tasters sniffed solemnly, stared, and finally took a sip.
“I have tears in my eyes,” Nicolas Gaume, CEO and co-founder of the company that organized the experiment, Space Cargo Unlimited, told The Associated Press.
Alcohol and glass are usually banned on the International Space Station, so each bottle was packed inside a special steel cylinder during the trip.
At a press conference Wednesday, Gaume said the experiment focused on the study of the lack of gravity – which “creates enormous stress on any living species” – on wine and vineyards.
“We’re just at the beginning,” he said, considering the preliminary results to be “encouraging”.
Jane Anson, a wine expert and writer for the wine publication Decanter, said the wine left on Earth tasted “a little younger than it had been in space.”
Chemical and biological analysis of the wine aging process could allow scientists to find a way to artificially age fine vintages, said Dr. Michael Lebert, a biologist at German Friedrich-Alexander University who was consulted about the project. .
The vine fragments, known as reeds in the wine world, not only survived the journey, but grew faster than Earth’s vines, despite little light and water.
Once researchers determine why, Lebert said this could help scientists develop more resilient vineyards on Earth and pave the way for vineyard and vinification in space.
Christophe Chateau, of the Bordeaux Wine-Makers’ Council, welcomed the research as “a good thing for the industry”, but predicted that it would take a decade or more to bring practical applications. Chateau, who was not involved in the project, described ongoing efforts to adjust grape options and techniques to adapt to increasingly warmer temperatures.
“Bordeaux wine is a wine that gets its uniqueness for its history, but also for its innovations,” he told The AP. “And we must never stop innovating.”
Private investors helped fund the project, which researchers hope will continue in other space missions. The cost was not disclosed.
For the average earthling, the main question is: What does cosmic wine taste like?
“For me, the difference between space and land wine … wasn’t easy to define,” said Franck Dubourdieu, an agronomist and oenologist from Bordeaux who specializes in the study of wine and vinification.
The investigators said each of the twelve panelists had an individual reaction. Some observed “burnt orange reflections.” Others evoked aromas of cured leather or a bonfire.
“What was left on Earth, for me, was still a little more closed, a little more tannic, a little younger. And what had been in space, the tannins had softened, came out the side of the more floral aromatics, ”Anson said.
But if the vintage flew in space or was terrestrial, he said, “They were both beautiful.”
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Charlton reported from Paris. Nicolas Garriga in Bordeaux contributed.