320 Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon vine canes and 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine have returned to Earth on board the SpaceX Dragon. Yep, you heard that right, wine was sent into space and landed off the Florida coast, west of Tampa.
The bottles and canes left the Internation Space Station on January 12 after spending 12 and 14 months in space respectively. During this time both of them were exposed to higher radiation and microgravity. Space Cargo Unlimited, the company that took on this project, will also open these bottles during a private event and then spend the coming months chemically testing them.
ISVV (Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin, Bordeaux), ESA (European Space Agency), CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Scientifiques, Toulouse) will test the biological mutations that the canes may have gone through in space and will compare them to samples of canes that have grown on Earth. Their CANES project will also ascertain how these vines deal with stress and changes to climate.
The Bordeaux wines (sourced from an unknown producer) were stored in cylinders in space for 12 months, at the same temperature as regular Bordeaux (18 degrees celsius) and will be compared to the Earth samples to detect changes in chemical reactions of the wine ageing process. This project is called CommuBios and will study changes in sedimentation, bubble dispersion and chemical makeup of the wine due to microgravity and other conditions. These wine experiments are a part of a series called Mission WISE.
Science really has come a long way and if we’re ever lucky (or unlucky) enough to have to jet to Mars, we’ll probably have a wine bottle or 12 to keep us company!
