Talk about reaching new heights. Durham-based Mystic Farm & Distillery plans to launch bourbon whiskey into outer space — and they’re setting up a mission control center in Raleigh.
The Mystic crew intends to establish a command hub at NC State’s Centennial Campus in late 2023, where the spaceship and barrels will be monitored 24 hours a day.
If all goes to plan, five barrels of 45% wheat bourbon whiskey will be launched into low Earth orbit in January 2024. The intergalactic bourbon will age for one year before it returns to Earth and is recovered off the coast of NC. There will be enough whiskey for ~1,500 bottles of Mystic Galactic — the first commercial product manufactured in space.
Soon, interested buyers will be able to reserve a 750-ml bottle of the rare whiskey for $75,000. It will come with a 50-ml sample, a piece of the barrel it was aged in, two tasting glasses, and a special bottle opener.
The bottles have already generated a lot of interest. “We’ve gotten emails from people asking if there’s a limit on how many they can buy,” Mystic co-owner Jonathan Blitz told RALtoday.
So what will it taste like? “That’s the $75,000 question,” Blitz said. “Nobody knows — this has never been done before. I am as interested in tasting it as anybody else.”