It tastes like flowers. It smells like a campfire. What is it? It is a $6,000 bottle of Petrus Pomerol wine that spent a year on the International Space Station.
Researchers in Bordeaux are examining the twelve bottles of wine as well as 320 pieces of grapevines that returned to Earth in January. They say the wine and grapevines are part of a longer-term effort to make plants on Earth better resist climate change and disease.
Alcohol and glass are not usually permitted on the International Space Station. Each bottle was packed inside a special steel container during the journey. At a special tasting this month, 12 wine experts tried one of the space-traveled wines at the Institute for Wine and Vine Research in Bordeaux. They tasted and smelled the wine alongside a similar bottle from the same year that had stayed on Earth. The tasting was blind and the experts did not know which wine they were drinking.
Nicolas Gaume, the head of Space Cargo Unlimited, arranging the experiment, said the experiment studied the effects of the lack of gravity on the wine and vines. "I have tears in my eyes," Gaume told The Associated Press about the experiment.
Jane Anson is a wine expert and writer who said the wine that remained on Earth tasted "a little younger than the one that had been to space."
The small pieces of vine not only survived the journey but also grew faster than vines on Earth, unaffected by limited light and water. Such information could help create a way to grow grapes or to make wine in space. Chemical and biological study of the wine's aging process could also help scientists develop stronger, healthier vines on Earth. It is expected that it would take a decade or more to lead to practical, or actual uses.
