In the Ardbeg experiment, 32 vials, each with six milliliters of unaged whisky, were sent to the space station in 2011 and then mixed with oak shavings. After 971 days of aging, the whisky returned to Earth last year to be compared with samples that had been aged on the ground. Dr. Lumsden and a panel of experts sniffed and tasted, and he ran them through a battery of chemical analyses.

The whisky aged on the space station had lower amounts of certain compounds that are usually extracted from the oak. Dr. Lumsden’s tasting notes include the flavors and aromas of lilac, chocolate, rum raisin ice cream, cherries, and a savory meatiness. “I describe flavors in there which are very unusual for Ardbeg or indeed any other whisky,” Dr. Lumsden said. “I liked it a lot.”

Only 20 milliliters remain — about two-thirds of an ounce. Dr. Lumsden said he was inspired to try to reproduce the flavors on Earth and had started thinking about follow-up experiments.

At present, opportunities for drinking whiskey, or any alcohol, in space are limited.

NASA packed spirits for its astronauts once — brandy to celebrate Christmas during the Apollo 8 swing around the moon in 1968. But Frank Borman, the commander, ordered that the brandy remain unopened. (James Lovell later auctioned off his two-ounce bottle, still unopened.)

In 1969, after Apollo 11 set down on the moon, Buzz Aldrin held a private Communion for himself with wine and bread. “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me,” he wrote in an article published in the magazine Guideposts the following year. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.”

In the 1970s, NASA added sherry to the menu for astronauts on the Skylab space station, but backtracked when letters of outrage arrived. Since then, prohibition has been the rule on NASA missions.

The Russians have had a more lax attitude to alcohol in space, at least during the era of the Mir space station. (In 1998, Jerry Linenger, a NASA astronaut on Mir, took a photograph of his Russian colleagues breaking out bottles of cognac to relax right after extinguishing a fire that almost destroyed Mir.) In recent years, they have been reticent about whether their astronauts are bringing spirits to the International Space Station.