In 2015 we set out to design a Glass for the future of whisky, and write a story about the future of humanity.
Since 1827 Ballantine’s have stayed true to the way founder George Ballantine first made the whisky — we needed to ensure that legacy lived on for centuries to come. There’s no way we’re drinking a premium Scotch out of a plastic bag and straw once we get to Titan!
The Ballantine's Space Glass ensures we’ll take the elegance and ritual of whisky with us.
The Glass uses surface tension technology to draw whisky up through the capillaries to a mouthpiece, enabling you to drink in space with all the class and elegance you enjoy down here on Earth. We succesfully tested the technology at the ZARM Microgravity Drop Tower in Bremen, Germany.
To see the full specs read this over here. There’s a lot of detail on the thought process behind the design over here too.
My favourite feature of the Space Glass is the magnetic rose gold base. The material is super luxe, and is a lovely link between the copper used in the whisky distillation process, and yellow gold which is used in off-Earth manufacturing for its anti-radiation properties. The magnet - although not super functional here on Earth, it will come in handy when you want to put the Space Glass “down” on a wall or ceiling of a space bar, like the one we created for this film:
We won a Cannes Lion for the "intergrated, multi-platform" campaign which featured amongst other things:
A podcast for whisky connoisseurs.
A design piece for engineering enthusiasts.
Visions for bars of the future for sci-fi fans.
Future cocktail recipes.
An interview about the future of mixology.
And an article on the importance of dreaming about the future.
But perhaps the highest form of flattery, is that similar technology is now being employed on the International Space Station (for drinking coffee mind you...)