Wine that went to space for sale with $1 million price tag

LONDON (AP) — The wine is out of this world. The value is appropriately stratospheric.

Christie’s mentioned Tuesday it’s promoting a bottle of French wine that spent greater than a yr in orbit aboard the Worldwide House Station. The public sale home thinks a wine connoisseur may pay as a lot as $1 million to personal it.

The Pétrus 2000 is considered one of 12 bottles despatched into house in November 2019 by researchers exploring the potential for extraterrestrial agriculture. It returned 14 months later subtly altered, in keeping with wine consultants who sampled it at a tasting in France.

Tim Tiptree, worldwide director of Christie’s wine and spirits division, mentioned the space-aged wine was “matured in a novel atmosphere” of close to zero-gravity aboard the house station.

The journey turned a $10,000-a-bottle wine identified for its complexity, silky, ripe tannins and flavors of black cherry, cigar field and leather-based right into a scientific novelty — and nonetheless a positive bottle of wine, Tiptree mentioned.

“It’s only a very harmonious wine that has the flexibility to age beautifully, which is why it was chosen for this experiment,” he mentioned. “It’s very encouraging that it was scrumptious on return to Earth.”

Personal house startup House Cargo Limitless despatched the wine into orbit in November 2019 as a part of an effort to make crops on Earth extra resilient to local weather change and illness by exposing them to new stresses. Researchers additionally need to higher perceive the ageing course of, fermentation and bubbles in wine.

At a style take a look at in March on the Institute for Wine and Vine Analysis in Bordeaux, France, a dozen wine connoisseurs in contrast one of many space-traveled wines to a bottle from the identical classic that had stayed in a cellar.

They famous a distinction that was arduous to explain. Jane Anson, a author with the wine publication Decanter, mentioned the wine that remained on Earth tasted a bit youthful, the house model barely softer and extra fragrant.

The wine, being supplied by Christie’s in a non-public sale, comes with a bottle of terrestrial Pétrus of the identical classic, a decanter, glasses and a corkscrew crafted from a meteorite. It’s all held in a home made wood trunk with ornament impressed by science fiction pioneer Jules Verne and the “Star Trek” universe.

Proceeds from the sale will fund future analysis by House Cargo Limitless. A number of different bottles from the dozen that went to house stay unopened, however Christie’s says there are not any plans to promote any of them.

Tiptree says the worth estimate, “within the area of $1 million,” displays the sale’s possible enchantment to a mixture of wine connoisseurs, house buffs and the type of rich individuals who gather “final experiences.”

The lot contains the bottle of 2000 Pétrus that remained on Earth so the customer can examine the 2 — ought to they determine to open the one which went into orbit.

“I might hope that they’ll determine to drink it, however possibly not instantly,” Tiptree mentioned. “It’s at its peak ingesting, however this wine will final in all probability one other a minimum of one other two or three a long time.”