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.'

Comments

Smells like the same old snake oil...

[TripMaster Monkey]

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:

To the untrained palate, a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau 2005 strained through the machine became a more full-bodied, complex wine. Similar treatment to a Sauvignon Blanc 2004 resulted in a drier aftertaste.

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.

Re:Smells like the same old snake oil...

[seifried]

John Cleese did a short documentary called "Wine for the confused." Towards the end of it he buys 5 bottles of wine ranging in price from $5 US to several hundred. He puts them in brown paper bags with laters ([A-E])and has 20 odd people try them all (some movie star friends/etc, generally people who supposedly drink a lot of expensive wine). He then asks "which wine did you think was the most expensive one" to which the various people say A, B, D, E, John Cleese then says "I'm not hearing a lot of "C." Turns out that no-one thought the most expensive wine was the best one, in fact several thought the $5 bottle was the best. The moral of the story: wine, like food and coloirs is a matter of individual taste and price often has little bearing on what we truly enjoy. Personally I can't stand Beaujolais, I've tried a few and found every single one utterly repulsive.

Wine for the Confused (2004) (TV)

Re:Smells like the same old snake oil...

[zcat_NZ]

One of my favorite wines is "Purple Death" It's really nice stuff, strong and fruity, almost a liqueur like blackberry nip. I've also heard good things about Cat's Pee on a Gooseberry Bush although I haven't tried it yet. Definately intend to pick up a bottle somethme though!

Re:Smells like the same old snake oil...

[Greyfox]

One of my old favorites for "Smooth and Mellow" used to be the Beringer reserve but it was pricey (For me) at around $60 a bottle. Pretty much every wine I tried while visiting Romania tasted as good or better to me and ran me in the neighborhood of $3 a bottle. You can't find the Beringer reserve as easily anymore and lately I've been preferring sake as I was getting tired of purple teeth. Now my favorite bottle of sake is from Horin and runs me $27 a bottle at a local liquor store, though a couple of the sushi restaurants around here charge 2 to 3 times as much for it. Horin's great cold and if I'm introducing a sake newbie to sake, it's the stuff I use.

In general I'd suggest ignoring the wine snobs and trying a few wines on your own, if you're in to that sort of thing. A good wine is one you like. Just be sure to keep notes so you'll remember which ones you like 3 months later when you're shopping for another bottle. Also, since taste is subjective, I find it worthwhile to go back every so often and try some wine you didn't like so much. Sometimes your perspective will have shifted in the intervening time and you'll like it the second time around. Of course, I think the last glass of wine out of the bottle is always much better than the first one if you drink it all at once...

Re:Smells like the same old snake oil...

[jollespm]

You are right, smelling the cork is pretty worthless, however, looking at the cork can sometimes tell you something. It obviously shouldn't be dry or crumbly, and if it looks like the wine has really penetrated the cork, it can be an indication that the bottle is corked. The scent of wet cardboard is a giveaway for a corked wine.

Re:Smells like the same old snake oil...

[nettdata]

Hmmm... seems like you're an idiot. ;)

Actually, I routinely smell the cork of a bottle to see if it's been "corked". A "corked" bottle of wine is one that suffers from TCA contamination, which is most likely to come from the cork. (It can come from other sources, but those are very rare).

Basically, a "corked" bottle of wine tends to smell very musty, and smelling the cork will tell you right away if it is "corked".

The biggest "show" of wine drinkers are those that swirl the wine around the glass and make a big show of holding the wine up to the light and laboureously tasting the wine in front of the server... all you really have to do is give it a quick swirl and then smell it. That will tell you all you need to know when it comes to sending it back or keeping it.

Anything else you do with a glass of wine (swirling, etc) is pretty well for the wine-snobs that want to classify the wine and analyze it in more depth, or to look like you think you know what you're doing.

"Corking" is also a primary reason for real cork being replaced by synthetics. For that matter, there's a movement to switch to screw-caps as they provide a much better seal with none of the drawbacks of cork (drying out, turning, etc).

On top of that, some older wines taste like absolute shit unless they're allowed to "breathe" for a while. An hour or more in a decanter will result in a drastically different taste, finish, etc., in most cases.

It's amazing how much people "learn" from watching some stupid episode of Fraser or a movie. For instance, there was a marked 30% drop in the sale of Merlot after Sideways came out.

At the end of the day, the only thing to remember about wine is that if YOU like it, then it's good. Price, vintage, varietal, etc., has absolutely nothing to do with it. People just tend to feel pressured into buying expensive wines and doing stupid human tricks at the table for fear of looking stupid.

Personally, I'm a big Barossa Valley shiraz fan, but I've been pleasantly surprised by a nice Meritage now and then. :P

Sake is Not Wine

[good soldier svejk]

Sake is not wine. It is made from grain and brewed. By law and common sense that makes it beer in the US.

Beaujolais Nouveau is SUPPOSED to be drank fresh

[BlueBoxSW.com]

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.

Re:no more Barrels

[clifyt]

"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...

[maino82]

... 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.

Bullshit

[swordgeek]

Hmm.

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 /. articles about too, but that doesn't make them effective.

This make no sense with a beaujolais nouveau

[Anonymous Coward]

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.