Champagne on a mission to space

Maison Mumm has revealed the first champagne bottle and tasting experience designed for space travel and human spaceflight. The Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar will join Axiom’s human spaceflight program and fly on future space missions. The bottle is half glass, with a stainless steel opening/closing device and is protected by a shell made of aeronautical-grade aluminium.

The project was initiated in 2017 and has achieved full compliance with space cargo specifications and AOC Champagne regulations, and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) has attested to its readiness for future space flights. The product will join Axiom’s upcoming crewed missions to low Earth orbit and extend the collaboration to Axiom Station, the world’s first commercial space station, to test the product in real space conditions.

Michael Suffredini, Axiom Space’s President and CEO, said: “Axiom’s collaboration with Mumm and the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar recognises that, to bring humanity to space we can’t just bring humans, we need to bring human traditions.”

The conditions of tasting champagne in space differ on the physiological level with an alteration of the sense of smell. The behaviour of the champagne is also modified; the bubbles no longer rise to the surface, so they don’t release the aroma molecules they contain.

In order to comply with the dual space AOC Champagne specifications, the product had to meet a complex set of constraints, such as gaseous liquid in the absence of gravity, pressure contained in the bottle, food compatibility, material specifications, size, ergonomics and intuitive use. Octave de Gaulle, the founder of SPADE — an agency specialised in the design of objects for space application, addressed all technical questions related to the design with the active support of CNES and the Comat design office.

Jean-François Clervoy, French European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and veteran of three NASA space missions, collaborated on the project and said: “In space, it is essential to maintain a link with Earth and its culture. As a symbol of the art of living that has endured through time, champagne has this universal appeal.”