Instantly aged wine

[FistFullaRoux]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/commo...2^29677,00.html

The upshot of the story: Through high voltage and something called an ion exchange membrane, newer wines can be mellowed to take on the characteristics of a more aged wine.

What do you think? Hogwash or potential revolution?

[jsolomon]

Reduction-oxidation reactions are the stuff of aging, there's no question about that.

However, if you are doing this in a minute (kinetic-control) vs over years (thermodynamic control) you are bound to have some different chemistry going on. It's not like you're just folding proteins or electrolysing water.

I think some of the simple compound chemistry changes, things dealing with malleic acid and the like, will be the same between old wine and new wine. But more complex things dealing with some of the proteins breaking down, etc... those won't be quite the same. It'll be a reasonable facsimile, but a '72 Chateau le Hoity-Toity will still have a better depth of flavor over a '04 McVino le Blech run through the boot-camp-inator.

But, if it helps bring higher quality wine to more people, I tend to support its use in controlled areas.

[jackal10]

Would you like fizzy water with that?

[docsconz]

Sounds an awful lot like The Wine Clip. See also here

[Vinfidel]

humbug

[Carolyn Tillie]

LAME...

[FistFullaRoux]

But wouldn't high voltage seem to make far more of a chemical change to the wine than the magnetic stuff? And it would seem that voltage induced change would be permanent. Whether it's good or not is a different story.

And note, this guy claims to make (if I understood the article correctly) the wine "age" versus "seem like it's been breathing for 30 minutes", as others have claimed. You would be caramelizing sugars, at least it seems.

[Daniel Rogov]

I'm not the least bit skeptical. In fact I'm such a believer in this system that I am going to drive tomorrow morning to Eilat, there so at the same time I wait for this low-voltage gizmo to age my wine I can see with my own eyes the re-coming of Moses and the second parting of the Red Sea!

A physicist friend at the University of Haifa tells me that in order to attain the voltage, wattage and amperage required for such an effect (on either wine or a second parting of the Red Sea) it would take an instantaneous surge equivalent to the amount of electricity that is generated by the city of Los Angeles in a full year.

Lord love a duck! I'm all for miracles.

[chefboy24]

how appropriate that its coming from australia.

[Dr Vino]

Can a switch in time improve wine?

[mike volker]

I've got a process for changing lead into gold if anyone's interested in investing!!!

Best,

Mike

[LindaJ]

I'm all for scientific improvements. But some things just aren't meant to be tweaked with. I just don't see a problem with aging wine in a barrel and bottle rather than getting Frankinstein wine.

[Mark Sommelier]

Sounds an awful lot like The Wine Clip. See also here

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Thanks, John.

[Rebel Rose]

In 15 seconds it transforms the cheapest, youngest plonks into fine old draughts as fruit flavours are enhanced and rough edges are mellowed, he says.

Oh, my God! I was just thinking, "Surely this guy doesn't drink wine or he'd know that young plonk becomes old plonk," and then I reached the clincher.

Although Mr Tanaka may be on the verge of a crucial contribution to the history of wine, he confesses he does not like the stuff. He began his work on fruit juices and switched to alcoholic beverages only to soften the aftertaste of a particularly rough type of sake he drinks.

[LindaJ]

I noticed that too. Maybe the guy should just pony up the cash to buy better sake?

[carswell]

Actually, it's pretty effective, though I find putting the bottle under an aluminum foil pyramid while closing my eyes and chanting Burma Shave slogans backwards works even better!

[MGLloyd]

You people are a bunch of wankers. The only true improvement method is to drink the wine while wearing your tinfoil hat.....

[Gifted Gourmet]

article here

Tanaka claims to have perfected a machine that can transform a bottle of just-fermented Beaujolais Nouveau into a fine, mellow wine in seconds, all by zapping it with a few volts of electricity.  "We can now electrolyze young wine and ship bottles of fine wine out in no time at all," declared Tanaka, president of Japanese startup Innovative Design and Technology ... "Think of the savings we'll make. Shorter production time, no need for storage, no need to invest in barrels," he said.  Wine connoisseurs are skeptical of the whole idea of immediate aging, but Tanaka's company is not the only laboratory chasing instant wine.

An interesting article .. even nonbelievers will be interested in his results ...

[docsconz]

See here for another thread on this.

[Gifted Gourmet]

See here for another thread on this.

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oops! and from October 2005 yet! sorry!

[Alex]

Let us not forget the infamous Wine Clip.

[cru]

you drink it. i'll pass.

[Daniel Rogov]

I'm one of those people who believes that much of what we read and see in science fiction will one day come to pass. As an example, one day we really will be able to have Scotty "beam us up" and indeed laser surgery perfomed by robots will go a long way in extending both the quality and duration of life. Science fiction, when well written by intelligent people is a superb projection of the current state of knowledge into the future and thus actually has a chance at becoming a reality .

On the other hand, give me New Age nonsense and I scoff, for much of this kind of thinking is distinctly akin to the illogic of alchemy and the passionate but wholly unrealistic quest for the Holy Grail. In a phrase, at least from the Dark Ages the search for the instant panacea that will cure all from which we ail and solve all of humankind's problems has been a basically anti-intellectual groping in order to avoid confronting the sometimes impenetrable realities of the universe.

This latest "thingie" (I can think of no better word) is akin to the magnets that go around the neck of bottles or those that we place at their base to pass an electric current through them. As to that, let it be noted that wine, can be affected electrically in the manner claimed by the inventors of these gadgets only by generating the power involved in the mass cycletron at CERN, near Geneva and that involves some 10,000,000,000 volts and an amperage high enough to supply power to the city of San Francisco for the next forty - fifty years. In a nutshell, electrical or magnetic power lower than that ain't gonna do nuttin to wine!!!! True, you can insert a couple of electrodes into a liquid such as wine or water and boil it but that's not quite the same as is being claimed here!

This particular thingie (I do like that word, almost as much in fact as I like the sound of 'lawsy, lawsy') is said not only to age wine but to convert Beaujolais Nouveau into a "more full-bodied, compled wine" and make your Sauvignon Blanc dryer, all according to the inventor by breaking up "water clusters". I am tempted to use a minor vernacular cuss-word here but I will avoid that. Let me say instead that I consider this claim and statement abject bovine manure. (Should anyone have trouble converting "bovine manure" into the vernacular, drop me an IM.)

[Blair P. Houghton]

Um...no.

With CERN's power, you could transmute the nuclei to make new elements from the existing ones (yes, we're talking alchemy).

All you need to ionize atoms is a few hundred or a few thousand volts. About the potential of a typical static shock, though to do it continuously to a large volume of liquid takes an apparatus about the size of the ones in the pictures.

The theory seems to be that the current creates different hydration structures more rapidly than the random collisions and adsorptive catalysis that might take place in the bottle or a cask.

The question is, are they stable, and is the wine output differentiable from that input?

And is it really better? Because if you can create good stuff you can also create bad stuff (compare the process of hydrolyzing oil by bubbling hydrogen gass through it; you get shelf-stable shortening, but you also get trans-fats, which are something that natural hydrolyzing methods - catalysis in plants and animals - do not produce).

I don't doubt that the taste is altered. I doubt that it's really as good as they say it is. However, I'm game, and if I could put a few clams into the investment end of this gadget, I'd do it. I'll lose no sleep over making overpriced old wines redundant.

[ctgm]

I'm one of those people who believes that much of what we read and see in science fiction will one day come to pass. As an example, one day we really will be able to have Scotty "beam us up" and indeed laser surgery perfomed by robots will go a long way in extending both the quality and duration of life. Science fiction, when well written by intelligent people is a superb projection of the current state of knowledge into the future and thus actually has a chance at becoming a reality .

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That will be real bad for the price of wine as I will jump in my time machine and buy as much 1900, 1945, 1961, 1982 etc Bordeaux as I can. There will be huge demand created by all us time travelers