The drinks world has hit upon a novel way of making essentially dull products interesting – by firing them into space for no apparent reason.
Astronaut’s blend
Hamish McScrotum of Ballbaggie Distillery was one of the first to make a ‘space-aged’ whisky.
‘Yes, it costs a small fortune and has literally no impact on the taste,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘But it does distract people from the fact that we’ve basically been doing the same thing for several hundred years and have completely run out of anything new to say about it.’
Even at a time of global financial meltdown, he said, there was ‘never any shortage of super-rich idiots happy to pay six figures for a bottle that’s been into orbit for a couple of hours.’
Vin d’Espace
Gonforra Lurton of Chateau Bichon-Frise said that he was planning to send several cases up to the International Space Station for 12 months.
They would, he said, ‘be space-aged. Quite literally.’
‘Anyone who has watched a film about space will know it’s a perfect environment for wine,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘A bizarre alternative reality lacking in gravity and filled with curiously shaped creatures in odd outfits.
‘And offering poorly developed roles for women.’
Stellar press trip
Drinks trade PR firm Freebies and Poche is putting together what it claims is the ever first drinks press trip to space for booze giant Porno Rockhard.
Company director, Emma Poche admitted that the $67 million cost of the trip had raised a few eyebrows, but pointed out that this is ‘not much more expensive than buying a couple of cases of Burgundy – and probably easier to sort out, to be honest.’
‘It’s always been mission to demystify drink for normal people,’ said influencer Anne Fluencer, who is slated to go on the trip.
‘Travelling into space to make a 90 second Instagram reel about how drinks taste in zero gravity felt like the sort of content my followers will really relate to.’
Critics have said that the experience was ‘as weightless as all the rest of her content’.
Think of the planet
Not everyone has been impressed by the three-day trip, however.
‘This visit will emit 12,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide,’ said environmental campaigner Robert Killjoy-Elk. ‘If Porno Rockhard wanted to taste wine in a place with zero atmosphere they could just have gone to Adelaide.’
However, a company spokesman said they would be planting half a dozen sycamore trees which would off-set the trip ‘in about 2.6 million years time.’
They also pointed out that the general public could do their bit to reduce emissions as well by ‘ignoring the heavyweight wine bottles we spend so much time and money promoting and buying the dross in cartons that we make because Pricefixer supermarket tell us we have to.’
We have lift off
The Institute of Masters of Wine said that it also had concerns about normalising a situation where people head into orbit just to taste wine.
‘Once every Tom Dick and Harry starts going into space, we’ll no longer have a handy means of comparison to show how few MWs there are,’ said Maurice Oldbuffer.
‘Though on the plus side if people get used to doing tastings in a frigid, silent atmosphere, it could set them up nicely to study the MW when they get back.’
Click here to read about Bordeaux extending the borders of its appellation into space
