Christie’s hopes the Petros 2000 bottle, now up for grabs in a private sale, will fetch US$1million, which would make it the most expensive wine ever sold.

The bottle is one of a batch of 12 that European startup Space Cargo Unlimited sent into orbit as part of research into how food and drink matures in space.

The wine spent almost 440 days in space, or the equivalent of 300 trips to the Moon, Space Cargo Unlimited Nicolas Gaume said in a press release.

It left for the ISS on November 2, 2019 in a spacecraft known as a Cygnus capsule and returned on January 14, 2021 aboard a Dragon capsule manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

At the end of a blind tasting, the researchers noted “remarkable differences in the colour, aroma and taste components,” between the celestial bottles and equivalents which had remained on earth.

The sale is expected to smash the record for a standard 750ml bottle of wine.

Previously, the most expensive was a 1945 Romanee-Conti Burgundy which sold at Sotheby’s in New York for US$558,000 in 2018. Proceeds will go towards funding future space missions focused on agricultural research.