Fountain of age?
Electrolysis may be most popularly known for the removal of an unwanted something (e.g. hair). But a Japanese inventor insists that putting on something unwanted–in this case, age–is just what the wine world needs.
Reconfiguring atoms and molecules of wine (after blending with water, egad), a process known as electrolysis, will make young wines taste “older” and hence better he asserts. The Times of London reports that “reds can become more complex, and whites drier. A wine costing £5 a bottle could taste the same as one costing twice that,” which according to Hiroshi Tanaka, the inventor, “will create huge changes to the global wine industry.”
So you take a bottle of Woodbridge sourced from the Central Valley and stick it in this thingamajig for 15 seconds and it comes out tasting like boutique Sonoma Chardonnay? I thought that Woodbridge and its ilk were distributed “ready to drink” and no further aging was necessary (or wanted).
Even though the Times‘ mini-tasting panel (they do those in London too, eh?) thought it improved two bad wines, the transformation does seem too good to be true. Can a switch in time improve wine?
