(Gizmodo) - The story behind NASA's brief embrace of extraterrestrial sherry is a curious one. In the early seventies, the agency's focus was shifting from short, Moon-focused missions to possibility of longer-term inhabitation of space. A revamped menu was among the most pressing challenges: food on the Gemini and Apollo programs came in dehydrated cube form, or squeezed from a pouch, and was universally regarded as inedible.

According to Ben Evan's book, At Home in Space: The Late Seventies into the Eighties, in May 1969, Don Arabian, NASA's spacecraft project manager, tried living on Apollo fare for three consecutive days, and subsequently reported that he had "lost the will to live" and that, in particular, "the sausage patties tasted like granulated rubber."

After a year of working on the food program for Skylab, the United States' first space station, Evans reports that "the situation had improved significantly: the station would include both a freezer and an oven and foods would be provided in five varieties-dehydrated, intermediate moisture, 'wet-packed,' frozen, and perishable."

Spaghetti, prime ribs, ice-cream, and-for a brief moment-alcohol were all on the menu.

The tough role of Space Sommelier fell to Charles Bourland, who spent more than three decades at NASA Johnson Space Center developing food and food packages for spaceflight.

Bourland shared his recipes and reminiscences in The Astronaut's Cookbook:

My boss was Mormon and consequently, the job of heading the wine selection process for the Skylab missions fell to me. Selecting a wine was an interesting project for the people in the food laboratory, and we had no shortage of volunteers for the taste panel.

After consulting with several professors at the University of California at Davis, it was decided that a Sherry would work best because any wine flown would have to be repackaged. Sherry is a very stable product, having been heated during the processing. Thus, it would be the least likely to undergo changes if it were to be repackaged.