Suntory whiskey to get aged in space

The samples will be carried to the space station on August 16 on Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s transfer vehicle Kounotori.

Suntory has not announced plans for the space whiskey’s future consumption. Samples of whisky produced by Suntory will be stored in the Japanese laboratory facility of the global Space Station for at least a year, with some flasks staying longer.

In a surprisingly down-to-earth press release, the company focused on its scientific efforts, calling this endeavor an “experiment on the development of mellowness in alcoholic beverage through the use of a microgravity environment”.

Besides whisky connoisseurs, movie buffs might also recognize Suntory as the whisky featured in Lost in Translation. The company ultimately wants to determine the “mechanism that makes alcohol mellow”, something that still puzzles researchers and whisky makers everywhere.

The study will consist of two groups of five whiskies that have been aged for different periods of time. The company is known for their premium alcohol and in an interesting experiment on aging, it looks like the company is planning on sending up some of the whiskies into space and see how a zero-gravity environment will affect the taste of their products. The whiskey’s first year in space will be spent in “Group 1”, and for at least the next two years after that it will be in “Group 2”.

The Suntory whisky distillery, founded in 1923, is responsible for producing the Yamazaki Single Malt Cherry Cask 2013 which was ranked the best in the world last year by the highly-regarded Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2015.

The best whisky on Earth is headed into space. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company will bring back the whisky to be sampled in the lab only.