Wine From Space Station Could Sell For $1 Million After Aging In Orbit

A bottle of Château Pétrus 2000 Bordeaux wine could sell for $1 million after spending more than a year in orbit on the International Space Station.

The bottle of wine, which was first launched into space in November 2019 as part of an agricultural science experiment, is expected to be available for immediate purchase through the auction house Christie’s.

Proceeds from the sale will go toward funding future research.

“It is our conviction that there is no Planet B, and we intend to pave the way for our future by leveraging microgravity and enticing accelerated natural evolutions in a spatial environment,” Nicolas Gaume, CEO of Space Cargo Unlimited, said in a statement.

The buyer of the wine will also receive a bottle of the same wine that remained on Earth in order to compare and taste the difference between the two.

“After spending almost 440 days in space, or the equivalent of 300 trips to the moon, legendary Bordeaux wine Pétrus comes back having been transformed in a way which is, literally, out of this world,” Gaume said.

The bottle of wine will be packaged in a custom trunk by Les Ateliers Victor with “a decanter, glasses, and a corkscrew made from a meteorite.”

Due to the changes in gravity and different levels of radiation, experts were able to observe how space travel would affect the quality of the wine.

“The initial results found the bottles positively endured all the constraints of preparation, travel, and storage on the ISS. Remarkable differences in the color, aroma, and taste components were noted, and the wines sampled were commended for their complexity and considered to be great wines,” Christie’s said in a statement.

A bottle of Château Pétrus 2000 retails for about $6,000. However, only one of the 12 bottles that traveled in space from November 2019 to January 2021 will up for auction. The rest of the bottles will be kept for research.