SPIRITS IN SPACE
Why a whisky maker sent its single malt into orbit for three years,
To boldly go where no malt has gone before.
This honour belongs to Ardbeg, a whisky launched into space in October 2011 to spend nearly three years at NASA’s International Space Station. This highly acclaimed, superpeaty single malt has crossed that final frontier to become the world’s first “space whisky.” And now it’s home, with a wee dram of it making the victory rounds at Toronto bars.
If this all sounds like a cynical gimmick cooked up by liquor marketers or yet another sign of the new gilded age — like space tourism for billionaires from Silicon Valley — think again. First of all, while we may be indifferent to tycoons in space, many rooted for the safe re-entry of the whisky last September. Second, the zero-gravity whisky-aging experiment is no vanity project, as it actually has applications for a wide range of products used by everyday people here on Earth, including perfume, food additives and, possibly, for the development of organic pesticides. It wasn’t even Ardbeg’s idea, it turns out.
“There’s a Texas company called NanoRacks that sends small-scale experiments up to the space station,” explains Ruaraidh MacIntyre, Canada’s brand manager for Ardbeg. “And they approached us because Ardbeg was their favourite whisky.”
So, the Scottish whisky company gave NanoRacks some of the raw spirit, which was sent up with shavings of charred oak to mimic the nor- mal maturation process — spirit in oak barrels. Ultimately, the experiment will help determine whether there’s any difference in the interactions between “terpenes” (hydrocarbon chains in ethanol, responsible for much of the spirit’s aroma) and wood in a zero-gravity environment and those on gravity-plagued Earth.
“They’ll be looking for either a much higher or much lower formation of terpenes because, once you’re into space, a lack of gravity does change things quite dramatically in terms of the flow of fluids,” says MacIntyre.
But the big question on everybody’s mind is: How does the whisky taste? Is it really out of this world? Is there a future in Zero-G hooch?
“In terms of the flavour, I have no idea how it will have been affected,” MacIntyre says. “We won’t know un- til we see the results.”
Fact is, he’ll probably never get to taste any of the space whisky since the distillery only had about a quarter of a litre come back for analysis. However, his sister, Bryony MacIntyre, an analytical chemist who also works for Ardbeg, may have a chance to savour a drop or two in the name of science.
For everybody else not lucky enough to get a taste, the second-best option is to drown those sorrows in Ardbeg’s Supernova ($335.95 at the LCBO) or Perpetuum ($186.95), two small one-off releases that were inspired by the spirited experiment. Admittedly, neither has actually left our orbit but the Perpetuum launch (June 13 at the LCBO) is being celebrated with a world tour of a vial of the actual liquid that spent all that time at the International Space Station.