Research Containing: NanoRacks

In August 2011, an approach was made to Moët Hennessy USA by a scienti c research company called NanoRacks, LLC based in Houston,Texas, USA. NanoRacks designs and implements research programmes aboard the International Space Station via a Space Act Agreement with NASA, in conditions of micro-gravity, compared to the conditions on Earth. Given its very particular taste pro le, the Ardbeg Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky was already well known to the scientists of NanoRacks, and they had developed an idea, involving some form of experiment, or examination, of the effect of micro-gravity on the behaviour of terpenes, the building blocks of avour for whisky spirits as well as for many other foods and wines, as research into terpenes in micro-gravity was limited.We were therefore offered an opportunity to participate in this experiment, including contributing to the design of it, however, our timescale for participation was extremely tight. We collected a quantity of Ardbeg distillate (the liquid resulting from distillation which is normally lled into oak barrels for maturation), along with oak wood shavings from the inside of a charred American White Oak ex-Bourbon barrel, which was due to be despatched from the cooperage to Ardbeg Distillery on the Island of Islay for lling with new Ardbeg distillate.These materials were carefully packaged and sent to the NanoRacks scientists in Houston, where they were packaged into their small sample testing system, known as MixStixTM, which in turn were sent to Kazakhstan to be loaded on to the Soyuz booster rocket destined for the International Space Station. A number of the MixStixTM were also sent to us to use as controls. Three days after launch, the MixStixTM were passed over to astronauts aboard the International Space Station.After an initial period of acclimatisation to the conditions aboard the ISS, in January 2012, the experiment was initiated, as the astronauts broke the glass separating walls in the individual MixStixTM, thus allowing the distillate and the oak wood shavings to come into contact with each other. At the same time on Ear th, we initiated the control experiment by breaking the separating wall in my MixStixTM on Islay (which had been sent back to me at Ardbeg Distillery from NanoRack’s laboratories in Houston, USA). The MixStixTM vials remained on the International Space Station until September 2014, nally returning to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 12th September 2014.The vials were in conditions of micro-gravity, with the distillate and oak wood in contact, for a total of 971 days, orbiting the Earth 15 times a day during this period.The MixStixTM vials were delivered back to Ardbeg in November 2014, after which the distillate from both the micro-gravity and Earth control samples was carefully extracted.A range of comparative analyses were then carried out,to determine if there were any differences between the two sets of samples.

Related URLs:
https://www.ardbeg.com/CDN/ardbeg-media/ardbeg/supernova/ARD9109SupernovaWhitePaperA4.pdf