Fast Track to Fine Wine? 435
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.'
Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [thewineclip.com], Wine Cellar Express [winecellarexpress.com], The Perfect Sommelier [perfectsommelier.com], 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.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, the whole wine tasting industry is mostly snake oil anyway. I can't find the link, but sone researchers did a "pepsi challenge" type of test with a group of experienced wine tasters. The result? No two wine tasters reported the same taste, body, or whatever from the same wines. Their repsonses were, in fact, wildly dissimilar.
Bring back the good old days, when wine had the same social status as lager, thats what I say!
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:5, Informative)
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) [imdb.com]
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:3, Funny)
You know, I enjoy beligian beers a whole lot (amount, not frequencey) and I often find the same experience where the last one tastes very very good. Oftentimes even a type that I wouldn't like on the first beer. If only I could find some corelation between drinking beer or wine and enjoying things. Hmmm... maybe these drinks have SOMETHING in common that I'm just not grasping.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Funny)
Elitist!
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Funny)
On a more serious note, my uncle (who, like one of my mum's boyfriends (see earlier post) is a bit of a wine wanker) got it right on one Christmas binge I recall (dimly). I was under the illusion that if we drank the _really_ _exceptionally_ _good_ red he brought first, then got stuck into the comparatively second-rate stuff I had later, it'd be OK. He suggested that we'd be better off graduating to the
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've also had wine costing anywhere from $500-$1000/bottle. Did it taste better than the cheaper ones? The avg drinker would probably say no. Usually what an expensive bottle adds is a range of flavors that change over time as the wine is dran
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Informative)
People who know nothing about wine may well snuffle at the cork, but they don't know why they should.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Funny)
I once ran across - in an upscale liquor shop, no less- a brand of wine which was called "Cheap White Wine". My palate isn't sophisticated enough to comment on the wine's body, aroma, etc., but said wine was indeed white, was indeed cheap, and the label was printed on something which resembled a paper bag in both texture and color.
Naturally, I had to buy it. If nothing else, everyone got a laugh out of it, and it was refreshing to see t
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:5, Interesting)
But, for tasting, human taster are indispensable. In the brewery that I worked for, senior lab techs were trained to taste a certain chemical level in beer. We had controls (say add extra chemical in sub ppm level to beer), regular training (put just x ppm of that chemical to distilled water such that we learnt the difference between the minute changes) and followed standard scientific practice (blinded test). Human regularly outperform the modern $100,000 machines (GC/ HPLC) for compound like diacetyl.
However, I agree that a lot of the wine "connoisseurs" probably do not know what they are talking about... they just learnt to use big word to foil the crowd.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't mean it's snake oil, it means that different people have different tastes.
Consider an analogy to movies. Not every review gives every movie that same rating,
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
My parents recently took a wine appreciation course. When describing a win there was little push for the descriptions to be based on anything particular. The fact is, any wine can taste quite different to different people.
It was quite possible by the end of the course for most of the people to identify which family of wines they appreciated the most. My mother has one particular family of wines she likes, while my father
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's a positive effect, then the reason is something other than what they're claiming. The article gives two irreconcilable explanations for what the machine is doing. one of which is wrong and one of which is nonsensical.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Check the demographic; it's being tried out in Japan where people go nuts over the latest techno-fad. I'm suprised the wine makers aren't lined up for it.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
We don't have an article called "Whinoes"
* Start this article
Apparently, neither has Wikipedia :)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
i already posted my definition, it's slang, deragatory, and apparently much out of fashion. which just makes me more of a geek for knowing obsolete slang.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that the wine industry has also lobbied heavily to obtain exemption from ingredient labeling requirements which almost every other product is subject to. They don't want you to know what is in there...
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
and why the resulting wine is better
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Umm... acid is H+ (or H3O+) ions. Which are not negative. In fact, they are the exact opposite of negative - positive.
Snake oil.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Comparing a de-ionizer to a magnet is bogus, and leading everyone else to think the same is shady. That's why I didn't find your commentary terribly insightful. I agree
A real chemical change (Score:2)
I would certainly pay $5 for a bottle of new wine treated this way, just to see wh
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Needless to say, I think 90% of the whole "tasting" industry is pretentious nonsense started to skyrocket the price of certain brands/lines.
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
This for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud [wikipedia.org]
"In 1985, diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze) appeared to to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high levels of c
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:3, Informative)
However some scientific studies have found that placebos can have the same effects as the real deal... its one of the great mysteries of the human bodi. So where does that leave us? Maybe it really *does* enhance the flavor to know that its an expensive wine. Maybe its even worth it!
Re:Smells like the same old snake oil... (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
God help them (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
shochu? too bad (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:shochu? too bad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:God help them (Score:5, Funny)
Shows what you know! Alcoholics Anonymous have been running the industry from behind the scenes for years!
Re:God help them (Score:2)
Re:God help them (Score:5, Funny)
I sense a beer drinker. If they ever come up with a way to turn fine British beer into Budwiser I'll let you know.
Re:God help them (Score:2)
Easy! Just drink a few pints of Fuller's ESB [fullers.co.uk], wait about an hour, and dispense the pale yellow fluid directly from your urethra into an appropriate receptacle.
Re:God help them (Score:5, Funny)
It's quite simple: drink the British, and piss into a Bud bottle.
Re:God help them (Score:5, Funny)
With a DeBeers diamond, an African child may well have died a result of its production. That's the human touch, and that's why people should be more impressed by a genuine natural diamond.
Into a fine, mellow wine in seconds... (Score:5, Funny)
Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
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".
Printing presses hurt profit, says monk (Score:2)
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
Who. The. Fuck. Cares.
Judging by your overly hostile response, I'd have to say you did.
Re:Why? Who wants to devalue their product? (Score:2)
no more Barrels (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no more Barrels (Score:2)
Re:no more Barrels (Score:2)
Re:no more Barrels (Score:2)
It should be pointed out that the tree stood in France, which had the inevitable consequence of it being cut down in France, not England. FTA:
The 120-ft Morat tree was planted in about 1665 in the Forêt de Tronçais, on the edge of the Massif Central, in the reign of Louis XIV.
Interesting story nonetheless.
Re:no more Barrels (Score:2)
The secret to fine wine (Score:3, Funny)
Now way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now way (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Now way (Score:4, Interesting)
Wine and spirits are another matter. The market is unfortunately filled with speculators who ultimately do nothing but drive up the price of rare wines, as well as insecure rich people who buy the "right" wines with no appreciation for them. However, good wines _do_ cost more because they come from lower producing vinyards, take more care to make, and require more _real_ aging which leads to evaporation. If this device could eliminate the aging and evaporation, then it might irritate some insecure twits, but most wine lovers would be ecstatic at being able to buy world-class wine for under a hundred bucks.
Unfortunately, it's pseudoscience at its worst. Pity, really.
Re:Now way (Score:2)
People who drive Lexus automobiles aren't a relevant concern when making more comfortable seats in Camrys.
For your comment to be true, there can't be anyone out there that buys cheap wine. As two buck chuck demonstrated, there's a tremendous market out there for cheap wine that's decent quality.
Low price doesn't mean a wine isn't worth drinking. [lsj.com]
Sake is Not Wine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sake is Not Wine (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sake is Not Wine (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Stuff brewed from malted grain is beer. Rice cannot be malted. In fact, it needs to be processed with a special fungus to be rendered fermentable. Laws of the land notwithstanding, sake is not beer or even close to it.
just as there can be wines made from fruits other than wine grapes.
What makes a wine a wine comes from the process. The process of fermenting fruits is similar, no matter which fruit you use. But knowledge of brewing beer will not get
Re:Sake is Not Wine (Score:2)
In California, for example, any "beer" over 3.99% alcohol cannot be referred to as beer, and must be referred to as malt liquor, lager, etc
What a strange law. There'a a LOT of beer that's 4% alcohol or more. Lager has nothing to do with the alcohol content of beer, but with the type of yeast used. What do you call Guiness, which has about 4.2% alcohol by volume, or even Budweiser, which is 5% ABV?
Re:Sake is Not Wine (Score:2)
Its illegal to call Budwieser beer in california?
That should go onto one of those "dumb laws" sites...
Anyone know why they would limit what you can call "beer" (somehow, I suspect its got to do with what tax you pay on different alcoholic drinks...)
Re:Sake is Not Wine (Score:2)
Interestingly, Calif
Re:Sake is Not Wine=stupid logic (Score:2)
Beaujolais Nouveau is SUPPOSED to be drank fresh (Score:5, Informative)
In france they have festivals mid-november, when the year's Beaujolais Nouveau's are officially allowed to be drank.
Re:Beaujolais Nouveau is SUPPOSED to be drank fres (Score:2)
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.
now... (Score:5, Funny)
Good for table wine (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Bad Example (Score:3, Informative)
FastTrack wants to fine Wine? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:FastTrack wants to fine Wine? (Score:3, Insightful)
Beaujolais Nouveau... (Score:3, Informative)
Total snake oil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Total snake oil (Score:2)
Then why are they still mostly using corks, which have no advantages whatsoever and cause a percentage of the wine to spoil?
Not all cheap wines age badly. (Score:2)
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
Article wrong on basic science (Score:3, Informative)
wtf? Free protons (H+) or hydronium ions [wikipedia.org] are the cause of acidity, not negative ions!
Re:Article wrong on basic science (Score:2)
Sake prices might fall, if true (Score:2)
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 som
Re:Sake prices might fall, if true (Score:2)
Scotch is only made in Scotland. The exact same product, made anywhere else, is called Whisky.
Same type of thing goes on with cheeses and wines. If it isn't made in a certain region of the world, it doesn't get to use that name.
Sake can be made anywhere in the world, but Japanese Sake is expensive outside Japan because of Japanese export tariffs on alcohol.
Read this for more info: http://www.american.edu/TED/ [american.edu]
Wine? (Score:4, Funny)
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....
Molecule clusters? Gimme a break! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Molecule clusters? Gimme a break! (Score:2)
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
Oh ya heard this one before. (Score:3, Funny)
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
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
There are differences in wine (Score:2)
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 tremendo
Wine Smine (Score:5, Funny)
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.
This make no sense with a beaujolais nouveau (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Wines do taste different (Score:2)
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.
WINE (Score:3, Funny)
Important effects overlooked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dehidrated water (Score:3, Funny)
Garbage In - Garbage Out (Score:3, Informative)
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.