Improve the Taste of Your Wine (1 Viewer)

[Chu Gai]

Using magnets, you can improve the taste of your wine. Perhaps it works on beers too. Many testimonials from noted wine experts. They can't all be wrong, can they? Read about it, here.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

No, but they're probably all drunk! I think I'm gonna go get one of those attached to my liver and cut out the middleman.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Might as well put leeches on the outside of the bottle to suck the bad flavor out.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

A google search on "rare earth magnets" turned up this very amusing article entitled: My Husband Thinks I'm Crazy


Sweetheart, I think your husband may be right!

 

[Lew Crippen]

If you look at the testimonials closely, you will see that there are only a couple of real wine experts in the group: Anthony Dias Blue and Mary Ewing Mulligan. Some of the others in the testimonials might or might not be experts (Debra Threlfal, for example, might well be an expert, but being the president of a minor company does not mean that she is). The Sunday NYT article does not have name associated with it, so you can’t tell if the article was written by a food or wine expert or a gadget expert—in general a good many newspapers (not the NYT) don’t have experts writing articles about wine.

Plus, none of the really big names in the industry are quoted.

I have no idea if this could work, but decoding the information, it seems as though the magnet somehow causes tannins to be broken down from larger to smaller molecules without changing the chemical composition of the wine. My chemistry is by now pretty weak, but this seems to be at best a misstatement and probably technically somewhat inaccurate. Tannin molecules are no doubt pretty complex and very large, but I’d highly doubt that just pouring the wine through a magnetic field would break them down—and if it did, then the chemical composition would indeed be changed. It is possible that some large, loosely connected groups of molecules could be separated, however.

The claim is that the magnetic filed simulates the aging process in wine, by this process, is something that seems attractive. This might be possible, but one of the ‘experts’, Mulligan notes that the process mimics the process of aeration, which you can do yourself by decanting a bottle of wine 30–60n minutes before drinking. And it costs nothing.

Blue notes that this works better for red wine than white. Now there is a shock, as white wine is notable for its comparative lack of tannins.

I’d be really interested to see if the same results would be obtained in a double blind test, where each sample was treated exactly the same. Especially where the wine not passed through the magnetic field was exposed to the same amount of air and for the same length of time as the magnetized wine.

I’d also be interested to see how much advertising was purchased in Bon Appetit by the company.

In short, possible, but not probable.

 

[BrianB]

I've read tests of this "gizmo", apparently does nothing

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Chu Gai,

Thank you for posting this thread. I can now add "rare earth magnets" to the list of red flags for my bullshit detector.

 

[Greg_R]

I found that the effect can be improved on by standing on a coil of $800/ft speaker wire. Only use the copper wire... standing on silver ruins the flavor.

:rolleyes

 

[Chu Gai]

Every industry has its experts and pundits. They can all fall for the con. I posted this because of the parallels that exist with the field of audio.

 

[Adil M]

Segway- Sounds like a potential episode of Crossballs?

 

[Rob Gardiner]

I admit, I took your original posting at face value. :b I couldn't detect any hint of sarcasm or irony in your post but now I see your point.




Another source of skepticism: the testimonials in the link were all featured on the product's own website. Advertisements are designed to influence rather than inform.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Actually rare earth magnets are very common magnets. They use elements from the so-called "rare earth" series rather than just iron. See www.chemicalelements.com/groups/rareearth.html and www.rare-earth-magnets.com/ for more information.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

I meant when used in the context of "new age horse-shit".