Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.
"Recently, in England, they cut down a 340 yr old oak tree to make wine barrels."
Actually -- they cut down the 340 year old tree because it was infested and needed to be destroyed before it infested other 300 year old trees around it.
The fact that the tree was well known and thus to be used for wine making is secondary. I read this the other day and treehuggers were getting all bent out of shape about it until someone picked up the full story.
But yeah, wine in a barrel tastes 'more complex'. Better? I don't know...I don't care. But the wine snobs I know can actually tell you the type of barrel it was stored in by the characteristics of the wine (apparently its not hard to figure out if you studied the subject).
Beaujolais Nouveau is best when it is young. The third Thursday of November is the day it's shipped.
Semper ubi sub ubi
... 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.
"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.
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
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 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.
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.