Peanut butter and jelly. Salt and pepper. Cookies and milk. Heidi Klum and Seal. Excluding that last pair, some things just go together and form a comforting bedrock on which we can rely.
A 160-gram (5.64 ounces) meteorite from the Campo del Cielo fall in Argentina failed to replicate the smooth-tasting promise of Meterito, the world’s first wine aged with a genuine meteorite. Chris Raymond photo
So how about meteorites and wine? Sounds crazy, sure, but nattering nabobs probably said the same thing after some cave-mom first slapped some peanut butter on her cave-kid’s jelly sammich, too. You just never know, which is why Meterito, the world’s first wine aged with a genuine meteorite, intrigues me.
The brainchild of English astronomer Ian Hutcheon, who works in Chile at the
Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua, an observatory he founded in 2007, Meterito is a Cabernet-Sauvignon crafted from grapes grown at Hutcheon’s Tremont Vineyard outside Santiago, Chile. After fermentation, the wine spent 12 months in a wooden barrel containing a genuine three-inch chunk of a meteorite that crashed into Chile’s
Atacama Desert some 6,000 years ago, according to an article by
The Drinks Business.
After a year of swirling around the meteorite and picking up all of its tasty 4.5-billion-year-old goodness, Hutcheon blended the wine with another batch of Cabernet-Sauvignon before bottling about 10,000 liters [2,642 gallons]. Unfortunately, you won’t find a bottle at your local shop yet; it’s only available at Hutcheon’s observatory right now, but he does hope to export it.
Inspired, I attempted to avoid the middleman and create my own “
secret solar system sauce” at home last night. After pouring a bit of Cupcake Vineyard’s
Red Velvet into a glass, I gently placed a 160-gram (5.64 ounces) meteorite from my collection into the vessel — a piece of the
Campo del Cielo fall discovered in 1576 in Argentina. Unfortunately, due to my natural impatience, I started fidgeting after only five minutes as I perched over the glass, staring in anticipation of a visual vinification miracle. Deciding there was no way I could wait 12 months, I slammed the vino, gagged on the harsh iron taste my meteorite created, and cursed Hutcheon.
Until I score a bottle of Meterito, the jury’s still out on whether meteorites and wine were meant for each other.