I too saw a story on this in another of my news feeds (Weekly Reader? Boys Life? Grit?) Me, I'm a voracious reader and subscribe to 'em all!!) and there was mention somewhere that the grapevines' time in space will hasten their maturation once their roots touch earth dirt. Now, I'm an adherent of Sparky Marquis' viticultural work in McLaren Vale, where this early acolyte of Dr. Richard Smart (author of the legendary canopy management bible "Sunlight Into Wine") figured out how to coax ripe, usable grapes from second-leaf vines. IIRC Sparky used these pre-adolescent berries in wines like Marquis-Philips by combining it with juice from much more mature vines (we're talking vielles vignes level, like third or fourth-leaf, ftw!!!) to produce palate-staining, über-gobby, big-pointy wine sthat put smiles on the faces of the fellas at the 19th hole down at the country club. so I'm thinking maybe they should give some of these outer space vines to Sparky to play around with. I think he'd be the right guy to make some spacedust wine from the first leaf, setting a Guiness record for nouveau (using the vaunted
Methode Sardonic Carbonic) and thereby drawing attention (and funding) to the space program.
Whaddya think? Better than giving them to some ol' graybeard "enologist" in Pauillac! Hell, slap a "
Moon Maiden" label on the bottle and they'd already have a theme song for the unfurling of the marketing campaign!!
-Eden ("now I'm just a fly-by-night guy, but for you I might be quite the do-right-by-you, do-right guy, moon maiden, moon maiden, Lady de Luna*, ahahhhh"
*and no, there's no relationship to Bernabe de Luna, ex-Michael Mina Group
