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Fast Track to Fine Wine?
wombatmobile writes "Hiroshi Tanaka, president of Innovative Design and Technology, claims to have perfected a machine that can transform a bottle of just-fermented Beaujolais Nouveau into a fine, mellow wine in seconds. From the article: 'The road, however, won't be an easy one: the company has brought the machine around to Japanese wine producers, restaurants and even sake rice wine and "shochu" sweet potato spirit distillers, but so far only a small shochu maker in southern Japan has agreed to get involved.'
This seems to be a variation on the theme of enhancing wine tate through the use of magnetic fields, as exemplified by such products as The Wine Clip, Wine Cellar Express, The Perfect Sommelier, and others.
Being, as I am, an aficionado of cheap wine, this has been a subject of interest for me. Unfortunately, it seems that every 'study' done on the subject that bears out the magnet treatment theory has not been done in a properly rigorous scientific fashion, while any study done in such a fashion fails to find any correlation between treatment by magnetic field and improvement of taste.
Speaking of properly rigorous scientific studies (or lack therof), from TFA: No mention of any scientific-ish study to determine objectively whether or not the machine has any positive effects. I fear this may just be the same old snake oil all over again.
Until I see the results of a few double-blind studies on the effects of this device, I'm suspending judgement.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So who else read the headline and thought it was a story about running Windows apps on your MacIntel?
Wine snobs have their noses so far up in the air, I don't understand why they don't get nosebleeds.
My guess: This is going to turn into the same type of fight with 'natural' diamonds vs 'artificial' diamonds.
However, I give the win to Hiroshi Tanaka & Company.
Unlike the diamond industry, nobody can effectively lock you out of the alcohol business.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Only problem is that drinkers must be accelerated to relativistic speeds to be effective. Innovative Design and Technology is currently looking for funding to clear this final, minor hurtle to the process.
All a machine like this is going to do is make your wine worth less. A good well-aged wine is expensive because of the time it takes to make it. If all of the sudden you're pumping them out like cans of coke, you're going to have cheap wine regardless of how it tastes. People need to remember there is a huge traditional following where winemaking is concerned. People who truly appreciate fine wines will not buy stuff which breaks from traditional wine making.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I'd like to try this out, living in Japan as I do, but if you'd ever tried shochu, perhaps you'd understand that it's not exactly that similar to wine. I personally can't stand the drink straight, but it's great in mixed drinks, the so-called chu-hai (short for shochu highball) that come in all sorts of delicious flavors.
Shochu has been very popular amongst young people lately, so there's a big market they can hit. I hope they convince a sake or wine company to try it, so I can give it a try. Here's the wikipedia link to find out more on shochu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shochu
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-200
Part of the cachet of drinking fine wines is that it is expensive and exclusive. Once you start allowing the hoi polloi to have access, it no longer becomes so special.
To make an example you'll all understand, think G-Mail invites. Specifically, when they first started getting passed around.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder if they've learned from the Simpsons and are just adding antifreeze...
People who make their own product for their own consumption is who. My brother makes his own wines for himself - imagine the fun he'd have seeing what his wine would taste like in one, two or three years with this machine. I agree - most 'real' wine makers probably wouldn't want to touch this, except for the vineyards that already 'temper' their wine to taste the same year after year like the Ernest and Julio Gallo types, but I think there's a huge home market possibility here.
The time (labor) and the years of time building the knowledge of the vinters to blend it just right, and time to age it just right. Next thing you know they'll be turning Beer into Champagne for those who can't afford the real thing! I don't think this will affect the high end wine brands. Many wine brands are recoginized as premium and consumers will pay the higher price when the wine really does not have the quality to demand the price.
This will never take off. Expensive wine is no different than expensive diamonds. People buy them because they are expensive. We've created diamonds in labs that "don't have enough impurities", according to the jewelry industry (and people seem so agree for some reason). This wine wont "have enough impurities" either.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Sake is not wine. It is made from grain and brewed. By law and common sense that makes it beer in the US.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
what the hell is wrong with Beaujolais Nouveau??? bunch of wine snobs to want to pay for anything other than george de beouf, mateus, or liebfraumilch.....
Beaujolais Nouveau is SUPPOSED to be drank right after a short fermentation process. It tastes like CRAP if it's allowed to age more than 6 months.
In france they have festivals mid-november, when the year's Beaujolais Nouveau's are officially allowed to be drank.
... i was wondering for a second what tha kazaa guys had against that emulator thingy
I don't think this will effect fine wine, with all of its Traditions and it has an established community that celebrates it, almost like a religion.
With the cheaper tablewines though this will probably be good for business, wine won't have to be stored as long and better products can be served to the market. I like table wine and I have found there are some really good ones & really bad ones, something like this could improve the overall quality of the cheaper wines & make it a lot eaiser to find a good cheap wine.
With boutique beer becoming more popular & mixed drinks going into more exotic flavours and still being sold at really cheap prices, improved table wine quality would help it compete against these products.
From TFA "In the natural maturation process, the taste of wine is enhanced by the mixture of alcohol with water molecule clusters, Tanaka says." huh? I think the sugar has something to do with the taste as well.
I would certainly pay $5 for a bottle of new wine treated this way, just to see what I think. Hell, I'd even pay $10 if the initial wine were decent. (Aging crappy wine leaves with you with crappy old wine and I'm sure this device can't fix it either.)
Even if it makes a small improvement, it still seems worth doing because the process just sounds so incredibly cheap! Also, if it really eliminates the need for anti-oxydizing additives, that alone is justification enough.
As far as wine experts are concerned, I don't think they're worthless or stupid. Wine reviews really are useful as a starting point. I've never tasted a wine with a 87+ rating which I thought was bad. Some wines I love are not rated highly by Wine Spectator, but they've never given a high rating to a gross wine. I hope they're impartial once they get to taste these electro-processed wines. There will be pressure on them not to be, but I still have faith.
And I absolutely agree with the need for double-blind experiments. I'd love to see 50 experts comparing a new untreated California wine, a 2000 from the same vineyard (famously good year), and the new wine that's electro-treated. Actually, I'd love to participate in this test. If these Japanese inventors were smart, they'd go to a Napa valley wine festival and offer a showy double-blind taste test. That would get peoples' attention, and they'd have no shortage of snooty, unpaid test subjects.
I like wine and am rather picky. That said, if something can produce EXACTLY the same thing as the slowly aged, $$$$$ expensive, traditionally made wine, then I must ask:
Who. The. Fuck. Cares.
Tradition be damned. Technology has replaced a good deal of tradition. Though, I am sure, this device will be illegal in France.
Maybe for a generation the next generation will laugh at us and buy this stuff by the case and all the "traditional wine makers" will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Progress waits for no w/hine.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If done anywhere well it is quite fine to drink. My wine of choice in late Nov and Dec. Drink it fresh & drink it often, yum.
,repeat ...
I Western Oregon we usually have a choice between 4-5 makers. Buy one of each , find which is best, buy, drink, repeat
Beaujolais Nouveau is best when it is young. The third Thursday of November is the day it's shipped.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Was I the only one thinking FastTrack wanted to fine the Wine project for something?
... is supposed to be drunk immediately anyway, so trying to turn it into a more "aged" wine is kind of defeating the purpose. wine snobs from all over travel to france every year to drink this wine on the day it comes out. personally, i can't stand beaujolais nouveau anyway, so maybe this would make it more bearable, but for those who do enjoy it this is kind of pointless.
Step 13 = profit!
The article babbles on about breaking up the "water clusters" and letting alcohol more fully mix with the the water to make the wine age more quickly. In fact, wine ages by a number of complex reactions both in cask storage, and later in the bottle. In particular, fine red wines age in the bottle through a series of reactions, many involving the breakdown of various tannic molecules. Also, really fine wines age over years, cheaper wines designed to be drunk early just get worse after time. If you take a five liter jug of crap wine and store it in a cellar for ten years, it just tastes like crap. I saw a lot of comments here about the snob value of wine, and how that will hold this process back. Actually the wine industry is pretty open to new technology in all but the most hidebound, traditional regions. The reason you will never here about this process again, is because it won't do anything, not because "the industry" will quash it.
"Platinum electrodes provide the juice, driving negative ions - the cause of acidity - from the wine into the water."
wtf? Free protons (H+) or hydronium ions are the cause of acidity, not negative ions!
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.
...when it comes to fine, or even poor, wine. They still get a collective stiffie when Beaujolais Day comes around, and believe chilled is not an unusual way of serving normal non-Beaujolais reds.
So is this WINE an Emulator? I'm confused...
Develop this technology years ago, but for legal reasons had to market the product instead as automobile antifreeze?
Now that is truly a fine example of what I call stupid logic. Fermenting + grains = beer?
So I guess whisky is also a beer right?
Idiot.
I assume that you refuse to buy man-made diamonds as well? Despite the fact that you can't tell the difference and they cost quite a bit less?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Slap a shinny label on it & ship it to the clubs.
Rappers can have it selling for $50 a bottle in no time.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
People nowadays might pay an awful lot for a genuine monk-painted illuminated manuscript. There probably are still a few on sale to exclusive customers. But do you think any modern book publisher would willing go back to small volume, high price? The bulk market is bigger.
I like wine and hope it doesn't devalue the market much if this comes into existence.
While I hope the same doesn't happen to sake, perhpaps, it will make it more popular. The problem with drinking sake outside of Japan, or at least in my experience in purchasing it in Canada, is that it is very expensive. There are $10 - $15 bottles which often taste like piss. The flavor is too strong (quite bitter actually) and over-powering when compared to the other (generally more expensive) sake. Though I've found some good ones for $15 or so.
The more expensive sake goes through more processing so its more expensive. I've found some very nice wine for $10 or $15 some made in Europe, others in North America and abroad. I like wine and its easy to tell the poorly made stuff from the good. I avoid the $40+ bottles for money and value.
Wine is made in many countries and is not exclusive to one country. Sake is AFAIK made only in Japan so it means that it is more expensive than more other liquors. Maybe this 'ageing machine' if it exists can lower the cost of some sake.
Why is this on here? We are nerds, we don't care about wine. It's moonshine we are interested in. Figuring out the fermination process, the complex weaving of pipes. Stealing the shit required out of the school lab....
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The business about "water molecule clusters" in TFA sounds like nonsense from a chemical point of view. That simply isn't how wine aging works. Now, electrolysing wine certainly will have chemical effects, and it's at least halfway plausible that those effects could be similar to aging, and it's entirely probable that the reporter may not have accurately quoted the source... but the purported explanation for how it works doesn't sound like something that would come from people who had developed a technology that really did work.
Unfortunately these inventions are always bought up by the powerful french wine cartel and shelved. Or worse sometimes these inventors meet their untimely demise. So sad.
Hmm.
/. articles about too, but that doesn't make them effective.
Tannins can be polymerised, compounds can be oxidised, but a large part of what makes a good wine good is what it absorbs from and loses to the barrel. Furthermore, oxidatisation doesn't occur evenly through a wine (tends to be more surface area effect than all the way through) which means that different parts of the wine in the barrel are different, and blending them adds complexity.
This (a) can't work well, and (b) doesn't work. I've got some audiophile toys which I could write
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It seems that most of the comments belittle wine and wine drinkers as some sort of elitist group. I'm guessing that the people who are posting these comments have never actually tasted good wine, or don't appreciate it. That, however, doesn't mean the difference doesn't exist and is not obvious to even casual wine drinkers.
For those who actually enjoy wine, the ability to recreate the aging process rapidly is a sort of holy grail. Aging mellows out the harsh elements of a fine wine and brings out a tremendous complexity. On the other hand, aging turns a weak wine dull and lifeless.
Am I the only one who scratched his head, thikning why, and how, would FastTrack (i.e. KaZaA) fine (as in "impose a fine") Wine (i.e. Wine Is Not an Emulator)? Sheesh.
Bah, wine. Keep your fine wine, give me a good bourbon or a scotch any way. You keep your wine, I'll keep my scotch and I can be drunk and passout on the floor in half the time you can.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I can't believe it isn't butt..err.. wine!.. butter wine? I'm so confused.
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
Either that, or the people who developed the new process have no idea how it works and don't know enough about chemistry to realize their "explanation" doesn't make any sense. Imaging what kind of explanation the chinese came up with for how black powder works, back when they first discovered it. It probably makes as much sense now as the one in TFA.
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It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I'm not going to comment on the machine or its merits, since the article was nice and fluffy like a new down pillow. I wish they would have included maybe some properly conducted taste tests or maybe some lab essays on how (if at all) the wine changed after it passed the machine. What I did find interesting was the word "Electrolyse", which if they are using the correct definition means they are subjecting the wine to electrolysis. Mind you, I am no chemist and know nothing about wine, however I do have some hands on experience in large business and it me that any Joe Schmoe without his machine could just say "Gee thanks Bob, but we aren't interested..." and plug in a cathode and an electrode a beaker full of wine and start to experiment with different voltages and times and have a really good time testing their results. These days distillers have staffs of chemists and it wouldn't cost them any more or any less to say,"Hey Pete! Put that PhD. in chem of yours to good use and electrolyze some of that Night Train Express you got there and then if you don't go blind after you drink it we'll send it to a tasting panel." Plus, I don't think you can patent electrolysis...see child-hood chemistry sets for prior art. :-D
This is just nonsense.
Beaujolais Nouveau is deliberately not aged (so as to not release tannins). Even once it has been delivered to your shelves, it is meant to be consumed right away. It is specifically designed to be a light, almost fruity red, rather than a strong, full-bodied expensive and long-aged wine like say a bordeux. Applying a technology to age it... completely misses the point of this varietal.
I was in Argentina recently, and any of their red wines (vino tinto) tasted better than the wines we get in the UK*. That doesn't mean that I can tell if one is oak-matured, or full-bodied, or has a fruity bouquet - but I can tell that Wine A tastes better, and has less of a nasty aftertaste than Wine B.
I brought back two bottles of San Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon - mmmm, that stuff is good. Hic.
* I don't spend a lot on wines here - I'm sure if you spend £50 or up, you can get decent wine here.
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I wonder what happens when one runs Beer through this machine.
And I don't mean Budwieser and the like, I mean Imperal IPAs, Imperial Stouts, Belgian's of all kinds, English strong ales, etc, the kinds of beer that I have aging in my "beer cellar" right now.
I've had some suprising success aging beers (my oldest is probably 10 months) removing mild skunk and metallic flavours, mellowing, bring out some subtle dark fruitiness, and it would be nice to be able to do that faster!
I don't think most american microbreweries who make such products would be "above" using such devices either, as long as they actually work. Of course, you won't get the character of wood aging (vanillin!) with such a device.
you cannot dodge the quad laser. jumping is useless.
Indeed. Quite a few posts before we get to your's pointing that out,
Seems an odd choice. Probably cheaper than cabernet but not as cheap as other varietals if he just wants to experiment with artifically inducing aging.
I also live in Japan and I have to say that most Japanese simply don't "get" wine.
The locally produced wine is so sweet it's simply undrinkable (although the busloads of grannies that visit our local winery tend to disagree with me).
Also Beaujolais is a Hype (with a capital H) product over here, just like champagne is in the west at New Year.
When the first shipment of Beaujolais Nouveau is permitted to go on sale many Japanese who normally don't drink wine and have no idea what it should (or could) taste like will happily splurge out on a $30 bottle of Beaujolais at the nearest combini (7-11) because it's considered very cool to do so.
Back in 1981, I bought my wine-buff brother a bottle of $2.95 moselle as a joke. (It was Ben Ean, for those Australians reading this.) To return the favour, he laid it down, and opened it nine years later on my 30th birthday.
The years had been kind to it. It was almost a dessert wine; thick, golden yellow, and sweet. Frankly, it was very good. Certainly a lot better than when bought.
On the other hand, I had some Merlot turn into vinegar very quickly. Come to think of it, I still have a bottle of that stuff in the cupboard. I dread opening it.
Who. The. Fuck. Cares.
Judging by your overly hostile response, I'd have to say you did.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I really enjoyed Sochu when I was stationed in Okinawa back in the 80's. Mixed with tea, it was more enjoyable on a hot Okinawan day than Saki.. It reminded me of the Korean drink Soju. That was normally mixed with Oscar wine, fruit juice and Hawiian Punch, as a drink called an "Ammo Bowl" It was served in a large bowl with ice, and alot of straws. The drinkers of the bowl would link the straws together and all drink from the bowl at the same time. Ahh, those were the drunken days!
A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire (1694-1778)
Good point. There very well may be a good market for this at home, provided it's made affordable to people who do it as a hobby.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I agree with you too. Mind you, the people who listen to rappers at clubs probably don't know the difference between a good wine, and a bad wine. You could probably dupe them in any number of ways.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Yeah, notice how you never see artifical diamonds in jewelry. The diamond cartels have "educated" people into thinking A) diamonds are rare, and B) manufactured diamonds are inferior. Even if this questionable/crazy contraption does work, it'll never be accepted by the "wine industry".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I've not actually bought a diamond yet, so I couldn't say for sure. I would probably ask an expert on diamonds (we have a few rock hounds in the family) to help me with that decision.
What I wouldn't do, is take the word of some random slashdot poster. Research is key to not getting yourself screwed over.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This Wine Is Not Emulated.
I did a "junior year abroad" in Tokyo during 1985-86. I liked shochu a lot because when I drank A LOT of it, suddenly it was a lot easier to speak and think in Japanese. Never did figure out why, but I sure remember the sensation of being able to remember exactly the right word at conversation speed. My Japanese roommates thought it was funny as hell and took me out for shochu quite a bit.
AFAIK, there's a lot more than this to wine maturation. One important effect is esterification of carboxylic acids and alcohols, which produces entirely new aromas. In lab conditions it is possible to esterify substances in a few minutes using strong catalysts such as sulphuric acid and high temperatures, but it takes months or years in a wine cellar.
Besides, as others have mentioned already, it's silly to try and mature Beaujolais Noveau, as it's meant to be enjoyed straight away after production.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
So Beryllium Sphere doesn't get wine or wine-drinking. There are good $5 wines, there are old and dead $100 wines, there are ok $5 wines which will be really good if you stick them in the cellar for 5 years. Sure, some wine-drinkers are just snobs, but it's really mostly about taste. And then there's wine that you're drinking with food, vs. wine that you're drinking by itself. Trader Joe's "Two Buck Chuck" (Charles Shaw) wines don't usually have a lot of complexity, but they're also the most recent year's vintage - keep it around a while - or just treat it as something to have with an average dinner when you might not have bothered getting out the better wine.
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Whisky is essentially distilled beer.
They're using the wrong approach if they're trying to sell it to vintners. This shouldn't be marketed as a way to _replace_ ageing, but rather as a way to complement it. If it can make a not-so-good wine much better, imagine what this wine will be like after you allow it to age in the traditional way.
free the mallocs!
All a cotton gin like this is going to do is make your fabric worth less. A good fabric is expensive because of the labor it takes to make it. If all of the sudden you're pumping them out like cans of coke, you're going to have cheap fabric regardless of its quality. People need to remember there is a huge traditional following where cotton making is concerned. People who truly appreciate fine fabrics will not buy stuff which breaks from traditional cotton making.
There you have it, folks! Down with the cotton gin!
Now if anyone could explain what it is about Australian whites that can invariably give me a headache with only one glass....??
Most exported "Australian whites" are wooded Chardonnays (aged in (French) oak). Try an unwooded Chardonnay, or a Sauvignon blanc instead. You'll notice the difference.
Since alcohol will dehydrate you, always drink a couple of glasses of water after enjoying wine.
Well the Japanese's love for ice wine probably has something to do with the local wines being made sweet. They don't have the food to go with a nice wine. Even if you go to a Italian restaurant you'll end up with a Japanese bastardization of Italian food that will never the less still taste good. I can drink wine by itself, but you can't fully enjoy it without an appropriate meal.
Shochu is popular because it's a good way to get a large number of people drunk cheaply.
It's certainly not because it's a particularly good drink.
Devalue? Think of all the bum-wine makers who can suddenly increase the value of their product?
Even if you go to a Italian restaurant you'll end up with a Japanese bastardization of Italian food that will never the less still taste good. True, but I don't think I want to try Natto Spaghetti ever again... ^_^
Imagine how much one can save if the wine is made with dehidrated water to reduce shipping costs and then zap treated into quality wine...
Oh well, what the hell...
To take your scotch example, many novice drinkers prefer the expensive blended Johnny Walker Blue (~$150-180/bottle), whereas there are many cheaper (often sub-$75) bottles of single malt that scotch aficionados would prefer.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, there is a very popular sake made here in Berkeley, California since 1982: Sho Chiku Bai. I have tasted this sake and it is good, but I wouldn't pretend to be a sake expert. I like to have warm sake with sushi from time to time. Here's the website regarding Sho Chiku Bai: http://www.takarasake.com/products/sake.htm/
When you do buy a diamond, please accept the fact, now, that you will have paid too much, and also come to terms with that your money was just about thrown away for a shiny piece of dirt. Also, if a woman *needs* jewelry to feel valued in the relationship...find another woman, because the truth is she loves the jewelry more than she loves you.
(of course, switch the gender pronouns if you are a woman and/or gay)
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People who truly appreciate fine wines thus only appreciate it's age and prestige? Bingo.
Hahahaha! Hostile? You indeed live a sheltered existence. The comment was uncouth perhaps, rude in a way, but hardly hostile. 6th graders often elicit more hostility durng their lunch break or mid day recess.
5 35664
Indeed, you made my evening. Hostile...
Let's pray (oh, perhaps hope for you religious haters) that the comment didn't make anyone cry or shiver perhaps quake with fear. Oh, that big mean poster dude! Next he may send a sternly written letter. Oh the madness. Indeed, we should bottle such unbridled energies and unleash them upon our most dangerous adversaries such as the care bears or perhaps that tart, Ms. Strawberry Shortcake. Damn her.
Your comment about rappers was cute. Are you a closet racist? God knows those kind of people (wink, wink) couldn't possibly know a good wine from a bad one. Imagine! listening to a rapper in a club... My god... http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174743&cid=14
Atually, Beaujolais Nouveau tastes like crap wether it's fresh or not. It's marketing hype for wine that wasn't worth crap, and Japan (where I live) has it the worst. I assume that the most bottles of exported Beaujolais Nouveau comes to Japan.
Trying to age a beaujolais is simply laughable though. So yes, I agree with you.
Now give me my bottle of Bordeaux back!!
I drank shochu when I was in Japan; I liked the flavored ones (shiso flavor is nice) and mixed drinks but I agree, by itself it is terrible. It's as good a mixer as vodka though because it's a clear flavor and it accentuates other flavors you mix it with. I'm surprised I haven't seen it in the US. Korean Soju, however, is pretty popular on the west coast, mostly because some enterprising lobbyist got the state of CA to pass a law declaring Soju is in the same category as wine for bar licensing purposes (meaning it can be sold with only a beer/wine license). Like Shochu, it pretty much sucks on its own, but it's a good clear mixer. I've never drank them side by side but I suspect they are actually basically the same drink.
Not all wines are made the same. Some wines are made to be consumed immediately, and those wines are NOT designed for long term storage. Others, are the very opposite; If you consume them immediately, they will taste amazingly tannic and harsh, to which is better to hold off on drinking them and put them into storage so that the tannins break down to 'smooth' out the wine. (and yes, that is the 'technical' term according to me :-P)
When some guy approaches me and tells me he can take BN, put it thru a machine, and have it taste like a 1st Growth Bordeaux that's been aged 15 years, I call shenanigans. That's like taking Bud Light, putting in thru the machine, and having produced aged Lager.
A more interesting test sample would have been to use an 'expensive' wine with heavy harsh tannins (like a Rothchild, or even Petrus). Take a vintage from 2005, zap it, and drink it side by side to a same maker's product that's been aged like 20-30 years or so, AND drinking it side by side to a fresh bottle from 2005 to see the differece between a zapped and non-zapped wine of the same year.
Not to be a total Debbie Downer, but I bet the reason why the BN has even got 'smoother' in the first place is due to it's exposure to air, resulting in some alcohol evaporation along with initial chemical change from the exposure to oxygen and other things resulting in some of the harshness to go away (similar to how the decanting process can smooth out the wine a bit). Remember, BN is designed to be consumed immediately, and spoils quickly.
I apologize for any redundancy in the post, its late...
This reminds me how SAB (South African Breweries) make their terrible beers.
Basically it's a concentrate powder that you just-add-water to, The only quality you get is the hangover!
To top it all, it's traditionally reccomended that any Nouveau that hasn't been consumed by January 1st should be destroyed.
The Japanese have an awful taste in alcoholic drinks matched only by the Chinese and the Koreans.
Sochu and sake remind me of watered down homemade bootleg and the stuff they drink in prison, respectively.
Anything they can do to make these taste better is okay in my book, though I doubt it to be possible.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Probably reminded you of Soju because they're the exact same thing. Both are distilled liquors, usually of rice, barley or sweet potato. If you thought they were much different tasting, it's probably because you got a sweet potato soju and a rice shochu or something. But I digress.
Soju has a relatively storied history, coming to Korea from the Mongolians in the 13th century, and spreading throughout asian from there, but you really can't find many good sojus nowadays. The last one to be really good, in my opinion, is Chamnamutong Malgeun Sul from Jinro. Unfortunately, I don't think they make it any more. All of the newer sojus are pretty much the equivalent of boxed wine (sort of). Cheap, strong, and for the sole purpose of getting drunk off your ass.
To the extent that Japanese Shochu is similar to Korean Soju, it usually needs all the help it can get :-) That's actually a bit unfair - soju is hooch made from whatever's available, which may be sweet potatoes or barley or millet, but some of it's quite drinkable, especially cold with spicy Korean food. It's typically about 25% alcohol.
But affecting vodka? Vodka's pretty much straight ethanol and water, and if there's any difference between fancy vodka and cheap vodka other than fancy bottles and marketing campaigns, it's that the fancy vodka has has been distilled and filtered a bit more so there's slightly less of the longer-chain alcohols left over or maybe the water that it's diluted with after distilling has slightly different impurities in it. That's much much different from the processes involved in aging wine, where all the complex materials are there and they chemically change over time, for example through oxidation. Maybe if the water in the vodka has a bit of salt in it the electrolysis will let out some of the chloride and just leave the sodium hydroxide flavor, but there's not likely to be much effect there.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The best part about anonymous posts is it's impossible to take them all too seriously.
I will understand if you prefer to hide under a blanket, with the lights out, in your mother's basement. If I was making comments like that, I wouldn't want to put my name to it either.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You know, it's less about a woman needing it, and more about wanting to do something for her. I'm by no means a traditionalist when it comes to that kind of thing, but when the time comes, I'll do it for her because I want to, not because I have to. Besides, it's not like everyone here is flipping burgers for a living. Some of us can afford to throw a bit of money away on that kind of thing.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
That's like taking Bud Light, putting in thru the machine, and having produced aged Lager.
That's rather easy to do, you just have to regularly replace the keg of lager and empty the bucket of Bud.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
This device is bogus. I've tried many of the so-called "aging devices" and they don't work. Tasting Notes don't lie. You cannot take cheap wine and make it good. Wine is only as good as the grapes, care and resources that went into producing it.
That's not to say you can't make wine taste different, and it's well known that even marginal red wine, if "aged" will change its taste and sensory profile. Sometimes this is better, sometimes it is worse. But thousands of years has shown that a wine's aging potential is related to its initial quality and care.
This doesn't stop people from trying to come up with goofy devices though. However, if you want to "age" wine, just leave it in your car for a little while. I won't promise it will taste better, but it will have more mileage on it.
Reminds me of Marcel Vogel of IBM, who discovered a method to age wines in seconds using quartz crystals. Unfortunately its seen as psuedoscience.
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
For a good debunking of a similar wine aging device, see
, 12980,1656827,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0
There is an amusing report of a proper double-blind trial. Conclusion? Doesn't make any difference.
Shochu is not necessarily made with sweet potato. It can be distilled with anything from potatoes, sweet or otherwise, to rice and wheat. As one might imagine, the flavor differs greatly. Most "sweet" potato shochu is distilled from "Satsuma-imo" (Satsuma Potatoes) in Kagoshima in southern Kyushu. (though other distilleries exist in other prefectures)
And what else really matters?
I've been to Bordeaux and seen how they make great claret, and certain traditions they use. But I also believe that many of those traditions are about maintaining quality. They often stick with traditions because it's always worked for them, and spending extra on a more traditional way of doing something is acceptable. But, if they can improve the wine by employing technology, they will.
I keep seeing random things every now and then from people who claim to have devices or processes to instantly age wine. This is not a new scam.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
May I seriously recommend that Mr. Tanaka visit Hungary? He will be able to sell hundreds if not thousands of his equipment in a few days. Hungary, a country in Central Europe is the wine-faking centre of the world. Although Hungary has very good wine regions of its own (Tokaji Aszu and Eger Bull-blood wines), the habit of faking became fashionable in the 1970s, when USSR ordered the COMECOM countries to send astronimical amounts of wine to Moscow to combat vodka abuse, thinking wine will not hurt russian brain cells that much. It was not possible to fullfil the giant quantity of orders without discarding even the most basic rules of honest winery. Let me say grape had absolutely no role or presence in the end product, but it looked and tasted like wine (somewhat).
Even though COMECON ceased to exist in 1990, the wine faking is still a huge underground business in Hungary. Literally underground, most of the shack factories use buried railway tank waggons to mix and store fake wine. Still it takes weeks to make the stuff and there is a big risk customs authorities finding out and storming them. With Mr. Tanaka's equipment they could make it in a few hours and quckly sell it. Fake wine is usually sold in 5liter (1 gallon) plastic bottles, many homeless people drink two bottles a day. There is even a popular mocking song that celebrates this phenomenon.
Big business with almost no cost, but good profit. Mr. Tanaka would be rich in no time.
Bullshit. It's still the same product. Just because everyone else can enjoy something doesn't detract from my enjoyment of it.
We have some great ales here in the UK, and people here are fanatical about them (The Campaign for Real Ale is about the most successful consumer organisation in the UK). People wax lyrical about them, festivals are held for them, drinkers will discuss the "hoppiness" of a beer and a few people I know get quite serious about seeking out pubs with unusual ales. However, none of this is about price (even the most expensive Belgian Trappist beers are only double the price of regular ale).
Barman: Can I get you anything, Sir? Del: I'll have a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Barman: Yes, Sir. Del: A '79.
Heh. I couldn't believe how long it took for this basic point to be made.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
But that doesn't change the fact that Scotch in Scotland, Bourbon in Kentucky, Sake in Fushimi, Shochu in Satsuma are the best.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
Which means they share characteristic, but that does not make them the same. They also have important categorical differences. Carbonation and alcohol content being good examples. The closest western analog for sake is wine. Anyone who thinks it's beer, apparently fails one the more important sections of any typical IQ test.
Sake refers to a wide range of drinks, including distilled versions. They're all generally referred to as wine though. Calling sake "beer" is idiotic becasue there isn't engough similarity in creation methods to merit it, nor is the final outcome more similar to beer than wine. Overall, the creation of the drink and the final product is more similar to wine. Idiots on /. What else is new.
This neutron stuff may seem like an urban myth, but I know some people who repeated the experiment in the eighties with a Ministry of Defence reactor that is sometimes used for colouring sapphires, and other strange jobs to earn a buck. They lowered in a bottle of Spanish rotgut brandy, left it there for a fortnight, and what they pulled out was a lot lighter, and smoother tasting. So, it can be done.
Because it's high in alcohol? I've drunken beers with an ABV of as high as 25% - higher than any brewed sake I've seen. Because it's not carbonated? The beer the Sumerians drank wasn't carbonated. Because it's made with rice instead of barley malt? You might want to stop by the Anheuser-Busch breweries sometime. Because it's drunken warmer? So are the stronger beers. The only real justification that you have for calling sake a wine is because everyone else calls it a wine. A good comparison here is with the tomato. Yes, the tomato is used and subjectively feels more like a vegetable. That doesn't make it actually a vegetable. Do you also think malt liquor is actually liquor?
I know I'm very unpopular for taking the "old man's stance" on a lot of issues- they've never taken a single article I've suggested (even though they fall into the much-disussed guidelines) and it's largely because I'm conservative, and the rest of you are young farts that DIDN'T start in computers before the Microsoft corporation.
:)
But I have to chuckle at this. "Wine" as we now call it, is the name for "rancid wine" from the times of old. The scriptures hold that "wine" (grape juice, these days) should not be held until later, when it gets "the bite like fire".
Sure Christ and pals drank lots of wine...mostly because Mountain Dew was a few years off; they drank grape juice. To drink it after it ferments was just a liquid form of temtation.
This is where you guys retort with all the powerful uses of wine and other spirits and call me a neo-con or something, but face it: a LOT of people die on the roads. A lot of people die when they stay too late, going home drunk with another man's woman. It's caused immense pain and suffering, no matter how good it might smell, or how many other adults think it's ok.
I just have to chuckle at this development; a faster way to cause that problem, now that so many other ways are clearly blocking our view of what's important.
And I'm not gonna bore you with a message you won't respond to; I'm just gonna chuckle. These are modern times, after all. You all know better than I!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
being a home winemaker myself, I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think if the price is small, there will be some usage of a machine like this, however I doubt it will really catch on. Most home winemakeers have dual purposes. I make wine because I enjoy it, and because I enjoy the process. The time, and effort I have to put into my wine makes me enjoy it all the more. If I could produce an aged wine in a few months, what's the point? But when I take 2 months for fermentation, a year or two of racking and ageing, another year of ageing in a barrel (or whatever) and testing the taste over time, that is where a good wine comes from. Not a "quick fix" machine.
Remember, making wine is not just about the final product, it's also about the journey.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Be that as it may, the size of the machine and the very limited description of how it works suggests they're doing two things.
First, it's probably being treated with a pulsed light system:
This step is most likely to force a photodegradation of the phenolics to reduce the tannin bite and raw tang of a new wine.
Then, it's probably going through a reverse osmosis matrix:
This would be to remove the products of the photodegradation and generally clean up the wine to smooth it out. The end result would be a decent, drinkable wine, much like the winemakers sell now in the $5-8/bottle range.
Since wine is a luxury item in the US, a higher price = exclusivity = higher desirability, so this process isn't going to be used in the high end stuff. However, if it can shave a month off the aging process for the low end wines, that means the vineyards can get away with less space for storing inventory as it ages, so they might be interested.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
My process also works in seconds.
About 310,360,000 seconds, in fact.
People like you must cry everytime that mass market gets their hands on goods of the quality that you've patted yourself on the back for paying so much for in the past. Us horrible poor people must make everything you love suck because there's no point in paying as much as you have for it.
Then again, there'll always be a market for snobs with too much money to congratulate each other on be suckered for. We'll just regulate wine snobs to the same dust bin as audiophiles.
s/does/might/
It's more promising than the magnets, but the bunkum FTA about "the taste of wine is enhanced by the mixture of alcohol with water molecule clusters" leaves me skeptical. I spent two years spent in the same house with an oenophile chemistry major turned professional wine maker. As I recall from his occasional diatribe on the topic, the nuances of wine flavor are primarily from esters and other complex organics; the sugar content and types determine the sweetness, but contribute little to the subtleties; and the water and ethanol are tasteless, merely controling how concentrated the other tastes are (and how quickly your judgement will go downhill).
This fellow may have stumbled on something... but stumbled is the right word. It sounds like he doesn't know enough of the science behind wine... which may be why most of the professionals (who do) are uninterested. I'll wait for the double-blind results.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
No. No. My parent's house was a split level ranch. No basement to be found upstairs OR downstairs. I never did check out back. Besides your email is "(email not shown publicly)" so unless your first and last name happens to be "kuzb" your not much less anonymous.
Anyways, I'm sitting in my very own basement now, listening to rap music.
Couldn't you say the same thing to an advancement in computer technology?
"Intel discovers way to make chips run twice as fast for the same price." "Why would they want to do that? Wouldn't that just devalue their expensive chips?"
To think that "[p]eople who truly appreciate fine wines will not buy [this] stuff" is like my dad, who doesn't trust computers that don't have a front panel of switches and lights, because PCs are not Real Computers. Whatever. Technology marches on. If we piss off some wine snobs because we have better technology than they did in 1647, so be it. We won't be the worse for it.
Actually, it's a last name, first initial. so, given that, where is your argument now?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
In Japan sake is a generic term referring to all sorts of alcoholic beverages, including distilled ones. Only what the Japanese call nihonshu is called sake in the US. Some types of cheap nihonshu are extended by adding distilled pure grain alcohol. Also some fine brands add small amounts of distilled alcohol as an aromatic catylist. But fundamentally, the process which creates nihonshu, called sake in the US, is brewing.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Same goes for most of the extra sweet white wines, often referred to as dessertwine. Some of those can age over a 100 years and still improve.
So, in short, most whites are not to be stored but to say that the exceptions are few and between is very wrong.
cheers.
a horrible place
The idea that people who disagree with you are incapable of understanding something corrctly is as elitist as it gets.
That you fail to recognize that speaks volumes about you.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
People who truly appreciate fine wines will not buy stuff which breaks from traditional wine making.
Good, then the rest of us will be able to enjoy good-tasting wines for less money.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
aaw, comment didn't work out quite like you expected? It's ok, try again next time!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.