Researchers taste French wine that spent a year aboard the ISS

Researchers in France's Bordeaux analysed nearly a dozen bottles of Chateau Petrus Pomerol wine that spent close to a year in space.

The wine, along with 320 snippets of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapevines, came back to Earth after spending a year aboard the International Space Station for agricultural research.

Preliminary results were announced on Wednesday, when scientists said that weightlessness did not ruin the wine, and it seemed to energise it.

The initiative is a part of a larger effort to make plants on Earth more resilient to climate change by exposing them to different and newer stresses and to understand the fermentation and ageing of wine better.

While tasting, some researchers said the wine had aromas of cured leather or a campfire. Such experiments could help scientists create sturdier vines on Earth and maybe pave the way for wine-making in space.