Wine aged on International Space Station expected to sell for US$1 million
- A seven-figure price tag would make the bottle of Petrus 2000 that spent 14 months in orbit the most expensive wine ever sold
- In a blind tasting, researchers observed ‘remarkable differences in the colour, aroma and taste components’ compared to an equivalent vintage left on Earth
If a bottle of Petrus 2000 that Christie’s is selling tastes out of this world it might be because it aged for 14 months aboard the International Space Station.
Christie’s hopes the bottle, now up for grabs in a private sale, will fetch US$1 million, which would make it the most expensive wine ever sold.
The bottle is one of a batch of 12 that European start-up Space Cargo Unlimited sent into orbit as part of research into how food and drink matures in space.
The wine spent almost 440 days in space, or the equivalent of 300 trips to the moon, Space Cargo Unlimited Nicolas Gaume said in a press release.
03:42
SpaceX capsule brings ISS crew safely home in Nasa’s first nighttime splashdown since 1968
It left for the ISS on November 2, 2019 in a spacecraft known as a Cygnus capsule and returned on January 14, 2021 aboard a Dragon capsule manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Tests carried out in March by a wine science institute in Bordeaux found that the bottles “positively endured all the constraints of preparation, travel, and storage on the ISS”, Christie’s said in its press release.