Slashdot Mirror
Ultrasound Machine Ages Wine
Inventor Casey Jones says his creation uses ultrasound technology to recreate the effects of decades of aging by colliding alcohol molecules inside the bottle. Mr. Jones said, "This machine can take your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk and turn it into a finest bottle of vintage tasting like it costs hundreds. It works on any alcohol that tastes better aged, even a bottle of paintstripper whisky can taste like an 8-year-aged single malt." The Ultrasonic Wine Ager, which looks like a Dr. Who ice bucket, takes 30 minutes to work and has already been given the thumbs up by an English winemaker. I know a certain special lady who is about to have the best bottle of Boone's Farm in the world.
You're right. Whiskey can't age in the bottle because it's absolutely sealed. Wine, on the other hand, has a cork through which air can seep oh so slowly. I'm thinking Mr. Jones' "invention" is nothing more than an ultrasonic bottle cleaner.
Yeah, the quack scientist who "discovered" this doesn't know the first thing about whisky, or wine for that matter.
What separates four-dollar (yes, the article says pounds, but in case you didn't realize, the UK has enormous alcohol excises that more than make up for the lousy exchange rate) wine from hundred dollar wine isn't that the more expensive is aged, it's that it's better made to begin with. Most cheap wine, if you age it, just gets worse over time. The region it's made in, the type of grape used, and the climate of particular vintage are what makes the biggest difference, an unaged bottle from a good vintage is usually far better than an aged bottle from a lousy one.
tl;dr Dude doesn't know what he's talking about.
Have you tasted it in a blind taste test? Or are you, like most if not all "wine snobs," simply fooling yourself into thinking expensive==good?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I forget where I saw it on TV in the last six months or a year, but they did a test like that in a wine shop. Almost every single vinophile picked the cheap bottle of wine that they were told was more expensive over the aged bottled that was in reality the more expensive bottle.
This statement is nonsensical. Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.
"The look and bouquet of the drink is improved and because of the chemical changes, the alcohol is easier to absorb by the kidneys and therefore, hangovers are virtually eliminated.
After reading that, I'm inclined to think this guy is clearly a con. This makes no sense, I don't believe it's possible to chemically modify the alchohol to make it easier to be cleaned out of the system, if it were chemically modified it wouldnt' be ethanol anymore. I could be wrong but I think the liver, not the kidneys, are the limiting step here. And hangovers aren't caused by leftover alchohol, a lot of the effects are due to dehydration, as alchohol acts as a diuretic to increase your urine output.
This guy is full of shit.