Meteorito is a Cabernet Sauvignon wine that was aged in a barrel for a year along with a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite! The meteorite is believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert around 6000 years ago. Ian Hutcheon, who owns a vineyard and the observatory, Centro Astronomico Tagua, in Chile, merged his love of wine and astronomy to create the wine. Hutcheon says that his project was an effort to “give everybody the opportunity to touch something from space, the very history of the solar system, and feel it via a grand wine. When you drink this wine, you are drinking elements from the birth of the solar system.”
In April 2010, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were picked from Hutcheon’s mountain vineyard, planted on an old gold mine 100km south-west of Chile’s capital Santiago. 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.
Hutcheon believes the meteorite gives the wine a “livelier taste”.
Meteorito is currently only sold at the Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua – an observatory launched by Hutcheon in 2007, but the winemaker is keen to export it to other countries, including the UK.
Around 10,000 litres of the meteor-aged wine have been made.
In 2013 the Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua will host the International Astronomy Congress.
Picture Credit : Google