Sending people to space is certainly an achievement worth celebrating. Well, now astronauts can celebrate in style, with a glass of Champagne made especially for the occasion.
G.H. Mumm has created the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar, which it’s calling “the first Champagne bottle and tasting experience designed for space travel and human spaceflight,” according to Dezeen. Both the bottle and the Champagne itself have been manufactured to provide as close to a regular drink as you can get in zero gravity.
The bottle—dreamt up by Octave de Gaulle, the founder of an agency that specializes in designs for space—is wrapped in aeronautical-grade aluminum and has a stainless-steel opening and closing device. These additions allow it to adhere to the rules that regulate Champagne, while also ensuring that it holds up when taken into the extreme conditions of space.
Once securely situated on a spaceship, the Champagne can’t be opened and poured like any old bottle of bubbly. A ring atop the neck keeps the cork in place and allows for a safe uncorking, while a button on the bottom of the bottle allows for seamless serving. Traditional pouring isn’t possible in zero-gravity conditions, de Gaulle explained, so the bottle has been designed to mimic the process. The Champagne exits through the neck and collects in the ring that once held the cork. After arriving there, it can then be poured into a special glass and sipped by the astronauts. It’s a process as futuristic as space travel itself once was.
The Champagne is also affected by space, and the G.H. Mumm team has come up with a special blend that withstands the sensory changes that occur when one is in flight. The Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar is made with grapes from the 2016 harvest—a majority of which are Pinot Noir grapes—supplemented with reserve wines from the past five years, the brand said.
The special space-grade Champagne will be available on upcoming missions run by Axiom Space, a privately owned space exploration company. “Axiom’s collaboration with Mumm and the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar recognizes that to bring humanity to space we can’t just bring humans, we need to bring human traditions,” said Michael Suffredini, the company’s president and CEO.
Let’s all raise a glass to that.