DailyDirt: Beverage Marketing At Its Highest... Altitudes?

Putting all sorts of things into space to see how they'll react in a micro-gravity environment has been done for decades now. Sometimes, it's really unpredictable what exactly will happen to stuff -- eg. will seeds exposed to space grow differently? But some things are not really too consequential. Do whisky drinkers really care if their favorite beverages are aged in space? Are astronauts allowed to get drunk on the International Space Station?

• Ardbeg Scottish whisky aged in space for 3 years has been tasted (finally!) by human beings, and it looks like space-aged whisky is somewhat nasty. Lots of fancy adjectives were used to qualitatively describe this whisky that we mentioned 3 years ago, but the aftertaste was "intense and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges and rubbery smoke" -- and "rubbery smoke" doesn't sound too appealing. [url]
• American whiskeys and bourbons have a history of tricky marketing tactics. Aging these alcoholic beverages or producing them in smaller quantities doesn't necessarily make them any better, and the name on the labels might not actually mean much beyond a "doing business as" moniker. [url]
• The Japanese distillery Suntory will be sending its own whisky to the International Space Station to "observe" the effects of aging its product in space. This probably isn't about the scientific exploration of whisky chemistry as much as it is marketing, but maybe someday, we'll see more ads with Bill Murray shot in space with more intensity. [url]

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