It was a cool and dark setting, but not your traditional wine cellar.
Not when it came to orbiting the earth at 17,500 miles per hour aboard the International Space Station, where a famous bottle of red wine from the Bordeaux region of France spent 14 months, according to Christie’s auction house.
The bottle, a 2000 Pétrus, is now being sold by Christie’s, which sets the estimated price of the bottle at $ 1 million and promotes novelty for discerning connoisseurs as space-age wine as private sector monetization, space exploration and exploration soar . Sip slowly.
“This bottle of Pétrus 2000 marks a significant step in the development and understanding of the aging process in wine,” said Tim Triptree, international director of Christie’s wine and spirits division, in a statement Tuesday.
The 21-year-old Pétrus is known for its complexity and its flavors of black truffles, black cherries, liquorice and mulberries and is considered to be one of the best vintages in the world of wine. A 750 milliliter bottle typically makes several thousand dollars.
The “space bottle” comes with a bespoke trunk, carafe, glasses and a corkscrew made from a meteorite, the auction house said, which includes a “terrestrial” bottle of Pétrus from 2000 for the buyer to compare the two.
A total of a dozen bottles of wine were transported to the International Space Station on board a Cygnus spacecraft from Space Cargo Unlimited, a European start-up, in November 2019. They returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon spaceship in January, according to Christie’s. This was the first time a bottle of wine that had gone into space was sold.
Nicolas Gaume, Co-Founder and General Manager of Space Cargo Unlimited, said in a statement Tuesday that the proceeds from the sale would help fund future space experiments to “invent the agriculture and the food we will have on earth for tomorrow need”.
“We are convinced that there is no planet B and we intend to pave the way for our future by using weightlessness and stimulating accelerated natural evolution in a spatial environment,” said Gaume.
Several wine connoisseurs conducted a taste test at the University of Bordeaux’s Department of Wine and Wine Sciences earlier this year to compare the space wines to control samples, wine website Decanter reported.
Jane Anson, the Bordeaux correspondent for Decanter, gave both the space-appropriate and terrestrial versions of the Pétrus from 2000 with 98 points. «» From previous experience with this wine, this particular bottle seems to be more developed than I would expect from a 21 year old. old bottle of Petrus 2000, ”said Ms. Anson about the wine that was brought back from space. ” It is beautiful and nuanced, with fine tannins and a feeling of energy, but has a distinct difference in expression. ‘
A seven-figure sale for a single bottle of wine could reach a new limit. In 2018, a 1945 bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold for $ 558,000, setting a record, Wine Spectator reported.
That same year, a rare bottle of Macallan whiskey, hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon, sold for £ 1.2 million (about $ 1.7 million), Christie’s said. In early 2018, two more rare bottles of whiskey were sold for $ 1 million each.
