Arrested Development

In this age of communal attention deficit disorder, a whole cosmetic industry has grown up around wine — not to make the fermented grape appear younger, but to satisfy impatient drinkers by making it taste older. And to botox away its bodily flaws with oak treatment or other dubious implants. As a wine writer, I get deluged with gadgets and gizmos that purport to speed up the ageing process of wine and smooth out its tannins. These devices claim to do, in the time it takes to decant the bottle, what should take five to 10 years of resting in a cellar. ...
Arrested Development
In this age of communal attention deficit disorder, a whole cosmetic industry has grown up around wine — not to make the fermented grape appear younger, but to satisfy impatient drinkers by making it taste older. And to botox away its bodily flaws with oak treatment or other dubious implants.

As a wine writer, I get deluged with gadgets and gizmos that purport to speed up the ageing process of wine and smooth out its tannins. These devices claim to do, in the time it takes to decant the bottle, what should take five to 10 years of resting in a cellar.

In my kitchen drawer I have an assortment of these devices – magnets the size of hockey pucks, funnels that flow like watering cans, plastic spirals like miniature water slides and pouring implements that spew wine in dizzying circles – all engineered to introduce air that will unlock the wine’s bouquet and flavour. And these are just the low-tech contraptions!

If you want to get fancy you can spend the price of a second growth claret on a sort of electronic push-up bra that uses electro-magnetic and acoustic waves to heighten a wine’s pH, thereby reducing its acidity. A mild application takes 15 minutes; for a stubborn wine that needs punishing, an hour. You can even torture the wine in front of your guests as part of your dinner party’s entertainment.

Or you could invest $129 in the Sonic Decanter, a gadget that will give your adolescent wine the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy. This piece of equipment, according to Gizmag.com, uses “high frequency sound waves to break down preservatives, such as sulfur dioxide, transform the molecular and chemical structure of wine, and accelerate the aging process.”

Call me an oenological Luddite, but I don’t want to force my wine to grow up, so I don’t use any of these appliances. If I want my wine to breathe, I don’t just pull the cork and leave the bottle on the sideboard for an hour or so; this won’t introduce oxygen into the wine, only a small amount of air would be in contact with the meniscus at the top of the neck. In most cases, the tumbling effect of simply pouring your wine will do the trick.

And if you feel that a particularly young wine needs a lot of aeration, then double decant — that is, pour your wine into a decanter or jug large enough to hold 26 ounces of wine and then rinse out the bottle to remove any sediment. Then, using a clean funnel (that is, if you don’t have a steady hand), pour the wine back into the bottle.

Then there are the wine mystics who believe sincerely that the triangles of a pyramid have occult power and will accelerate the ageing of wine. One such practitioner is Stephen Cipes, the P.T. Barnum of the BC wine industry. Set behind his Kelowna winery, Summerhill, is a model replica of the great pyramid of Cheops at Giza. The structure, at one-twelfth scale, is the most recognized icon in the Okanagan and the second such pyramid to be built on the property. Its presence is an ongoing scientific experiment that Cipes has heralded as an overwhelming success.

“Every day at 2 o’clock, for three years,” Cipes has written, “we toured the smaller pyramid with the general public. We did taste comparisons of the same wine, bottled on the same day, and served at the same temperature. One was stored in the pyramid for 30-90 days and the other was never put in the pyramid. The results were overwhelming. The tasters chose the pyramid-aged wine almost unanimously as being smoother and having a better aroma! These experiments boosted our convictions that, indeed, a precisely constructed pyramid becomes a chamber for the ‘clarification’ of liquids.”

Premature ageing is one thing, but giving the consumer the ability to change what the winemaker has wrought is a whole different kettle of fish. There is a product on the market called the Oak Bottle. And it’s just that, a bottle made of oak. You fill it with water for 24 hours, empty the water, then pour in an inexpensive wine and leave it for 48 to 72 hours to “impart an authentic oak flavour.” It was invented by Joel Paglione, who was born and raised in Ontario and is currently based in Chicago.

My pal and fellow wine scribe in London, Oz Clarke, got to experiment with the Oak Bottle. And here’s what he wrote: “As I take my first sniff, I immediately get a delicious aroma of vanilla. My spirits rise, but after the first sip they crash. It’s wine — with a hint of furniture polish. Even though the wine has been in the Oak Bottle for less than 24 hours, the taste of wood is overpowering. All the natural freshness of the fruity young Merlot has disappeared. I feel like I’m licking a plank of wood.”

So, please, allow your wine enjoy its youth and watch over it with careful patience. Repeat this mantra after me: “Wine improves with age, and I will improve with wine.”

Tony Aspler is the author of 17 books on wine, including his latest, Canadian Wineries.