Tuesday
Jan132009
Use Electricity to Turn Cheap Wine into Decent Wine
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 8:30AM 3 Comments
New Scientist has an article entitled "How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage." They note that there are many who have claimed to create a magical process to turn base vinegar into liquid gold, but most of them have been fakes. In this case, there seems to be someone who has traded in magic for science.
It looks to be something of an old-fashioned technique, as far as science fiction might go, though perhaps classical is a better term. Apparently a chemist from South China University of Technology in Guangzhou named Xin An Zeng came up with the technique, adapting it from a technique from the '80s for treating food.
One of the interesting things about the technique is that it's been peer reviewed. Also, it's been subjected to blind taste tests. Also, it's been around for 10 years. I think it's just now being talked about because it wasn't published in a peer review journal until 2008.
If I were more of a wine person, I'd plunk down the $31.50 to buy the article and see if I could recreate the setup that makes bad wine tasty. However, I am not, so I'll leave it for some wine geek to recreate. If you see a diy version, please let me know. I do love electricity mixing with food.
It looks to be something of an old-fashioned technique, as far as science fiction might go, though perhaps classical is a better term. Apparently a chemist from South China University of Technology in Guangzhou named Xin An Zeng came up with the technique, adapting it from a technique from the '80s for treating food.
One of the interesting things about the technique is that it's been peer reviewed. Also, it's been subjected to blind taste tests. Also, it's been around for 10 years. I think it's just now being talked about because it wasn't published in a peer review journal until 2008.
If I were more of a wine person, I'd plunk down the $31.50 to buy the article and see if I could recreate the setup that makes bad wine tasty. However, I am not, so I'll leave it for some wine geek to recreate. If you see a diy version, please let me know. I do love electricity mixing with food.
in technique tagged drink, electricity, mad science, wine
technique tagged drink, electricity, mad science, wine 
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Reader Comments (3)
Interesting. I, too, would like to see a DIY version, but it seems unlikely to happen.
From skimming the article, it sounds like a process that isn't going to work most of the time. It sounds more like what it does is take a young wine it make it taste like an older version of the same wine. Bad wine is still going to be bad wine, it's just going to be mature bad wine.
Conversely to what the writer of the article seems to think, not all wine ages well. Most wines are best if drank within 3-5 years. This process would likely take them past their peak and put them on the other side.
It seems like it'll take good wine and make it best faster, but not turn bad wine into good wine. This technology might be useful for wineries and possibly restaurants, where they could turn around a high quality wine faster without having to keep it in storage, thus having to pay taxes on it every year, but would have limited utility to the home consumer.
You make a good point. I suppose what I'm hoping for is that there is a class of wines that have great potential, but due to manufacturing costs and so on, they don't bother with much of the aging process, and just release it on the cheap. But, as you imply, a winemaker who doesn't bother to age to the proper point for that wine is probably not going to do a particularly good job with the grape selection and blending as well.
Interesting as a process winemakers can add to their bag of tricks but it doesn't sound like a home process is likely. Like any other process, its effect would depend on the wine and the wine's time. I could see its value in expert hands. Harold McGee just did an article, which included blind taste tests, of many wine improvement gadgets:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/dining/14curi.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/dining/14curi...
Point made by his expert is that some of these produce a change: But the change might or might not be an improvement.