Mumm to launch space Champagne for astronauts

For the past three years Maison Mumm Champagne have been working with space travel design agency, Spade, to create a Champagne able to be enjoyed in zero gravity conditions.

The new Champagne is set for release in September 2018, under the name Mumm Grand Cordon Stellar.

Mumm described the project as ‘a groundbreaking feat of technology that makes it possible for astronauts and other space travellers to enjoy Champagne in the challenging surroundings of zero gravity.’

The science

Mumm claim that the futuristic glass bottle is capable of utilising the natural gas in Champagne to ‘expel the liquid into a ring-shaped frame, where it is concentrated into a droplet of bubbles’.

‘It can then be passed to someone and released into the air, where it floats until gathered up in a specially designed glass,’ said Mumm.

The glasses have a tapering stem, no base and a small cup to catch the floating droplets.

See the team toasting their success in zero gravity conditions:

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What does it taste like?

‘It’s a very surprising feeling,’ explained Mumm’s cellar master, Didier Mariotti.

‘Because of zero gravity the liquid instantly coats the entire inside of the mouth, magnifying the taste sensations.

‘There’s less fizziness and more roundness and generosity, enabling the wine to express itself fully.’

Mumm has described the new wine as an intensified version of its Grand Cordon Champagne, with Pinot Noir expression of ripe fruit aromas.

Space wine

Mumm announced that the Champagne will first be served on zero gravity leisure flights, but added that ‘discussions are in progress to supply it to future space missions and commercial space flights’.

This is not the first time that wine has become involved in space travel; in 1985 a half bottle of Château Lynch Bages 1975 was launched in a shuttle from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Upon its return in 2015 the Pauillac wine was referred to as ‘the most well-travelled bottle of Bordeaux in existence’.

However Mumm Champagne hopes that theirs will be the first wine to be both transported and consumed outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Last year ‘Veggie’, NASA’s space cultivation department, said ‘it would certainly be possible’ to cultivate grape vines in space, suggesting extraterrestrial wine could become a reality in the future.

In 2016 the Chinese flew Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir vines into space to study them under space conditions.