Image via Centro Astronomico
When Dom Perignon first created sparkling champagne, he supposedly said, “I’m tasting stars.” But for those who drink Meteorito, a Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s close to truth: this Chilean red has been aged with a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite that came from the Asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter.
Winemaker Ian Hutcheon, who managed to combine two disparate passions—winemaking and astronomy—in a way that motorcyclists who are also soufflé chefs would be envious of, used meteorite not merely for its tangy hint of space dust:
According to The Drinks Business,
“The idea behind submerging it in wine was to give everybody the opportunity to touch something from space; the very history of the solar system, and feel it via a grand wine,” Hutcheon said.
Hutcheon made the wine in his vineyard in Cachapoal Valley, Chile. The Drinks Business wrote,
“The fruit was then fermented for 25 days, before undergoing malolactic fermentation for 12 months – it was during this process that the wine was held in a wooden barrel with the meteorite, before being blended with another batch of Cabernet Sauvignon.”
Curious oeneophiles can purchase a bottle only at Hutcheon’s observatory, Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua. However, the winemaker is looking to export it outside of Chile.
Hutcheon produced 10,000 liters of meteor-aged Cab.
Via io9.