There’s a Case of Wine Heading Back to Earth From Space

At last, Wine Trek.

A SpaceX Dragon capsule is coming back to earth from the International Space Station. CNN reports that 12 bottles of wine and 320 vines were taken up to the Space Station in November of 2019 and in March 2020.

Assuming they survived the splash down two weeks ago at Cape Canaveral, Florida they will be used by the good folks at Mission Wise to see how they are changed by conditions of micro-gravity and radiation. That will be some kind of wine tasting for somebody.

Experts will soon be detecting a “lower gravity tannins” and the “softening effect of solar winds on the 2045 vintage.” Ignore them. This is the nature of experts. It’s not their fault. And no matter what they say, it doesn’t rain in space.

So, there you have it. They’ve started planting vineyards and storing wine on the Space Station. Well, planting may be a little overstated this week, but can harvesting grapes on the Space Station be far behind?

Expert tasters will also taste the 12 bottles of Bordeaux to see what effects its time in space has had on the wine.

That’ll be an interesting tasting if it doesn’t kill you. Wine is more dangerous than you think. Especially when you’re making it in strange places while floating upside down.

I worked with a winemaker who made wine from vines planted on the Golan Heights (Israel). I thought that was dangerous. And he was standing straight up.

What with vineyards being a long term endeavor, those vineyards were put in to reinforce Israel’s control over land they had just taken in the war with Palestine. It must have worked. They are still there.

Winemakers don’t usually have to risk their lives or change country borders to make a nice little bottle of red but he did.

So who will be the first winemaker in space?

On the other hand, winemakers have to be crazy to begin with. Some work only after midnight like bats. Some go to crazy hard places to grow grapes like India and the Golan heights and Arkansas. Some don’t even drink. (Which makes them more sensitive to nuances in the wine.)

It’s impossible for them to be normal because of what my winemaker friend Barry Gnekow calls the “terrible too’s” —it’s too heavy, it’s too light, it’s too dark, it’s too expensive, it doesn’t go with my outfit. OK, I made that last one up. But it’s a lot for any human being to go through every day.

Ask any other artist how they feel about critics’ opinions of their work and they will feel the same. Too many too’s.

That first winemaker in space will be risking their lives too, just like my friend. For starters, what if the rocket blows up? Exactly how sick do you get at 3 g’s? (Really sick if you’re not an astronaut).

What are we doing about dirt again? And that’s before you get to the point where you’re trying to work while walking upside down in a spinning space station.

But, they’ll be famous.

Space is the ultimate change in climate

When vines are actually planted on the Space Station it’s remotely possible a politician or two will have feelings about that too. It does seem whoever is the first winemaker in space will be up against some unusual problems. Dirt for one. There is none. It would probably be hydroponic. That solves the rain problem too. No droughts in space.

Wine presses will be interesting what with grapes and winemakers both floating and all that. This is climate change of the first order.

And, what will the label read? Bottled in Space?

“Woody plants such as vines are crucial to feeding the human population, say researchers, but they have never been studied in space.‘This could be a game-changer in unlocking the agriculture of tomorrow,’ said Michael Lebert, SCU's chief scientific officer.

—from the CNN article by Jack Guy, Jan 13, 2021

Climate changes have already forced old vineyards in Chile to move South and classic vineyards in Northern California aren’t always producing traditional tastes as well or ripen differently as the wine country heats up and deals with the smoke from the largest forest fires in history.

Napa Valley cabernets are coming in too hot —-up to 150 degrees internal temperatures which means they are not ripening normally.

Wine is an intimate expression of the Earth itself. It changes when the Earth changes.

So how will wine change in Space?

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