Professor Quippy’s holiday entertainment tips: turning plonk into pleasure with science

Oh electricity, is there anything you can’t do?

According to the New Scientist:

Pass an undrinkable, raw red wine between a set of high-voltage electrodes and it becomes pleasantly quaffable. “Using an electric field to accelerate ageing is a feasible way to shorten maturation times and improve the quality of young wine,” says Hervé Alexandre, professor of oenology at the University of Burgundy, close to some of France’s finest vineyards.

You don’t have to be an oenologist to know that crude, young wine can be kind of nasty — going in and going out. But now there is a process to flash-age wines, producing some of the same effects that loving care, years of training and hard-earned experience can.

Essentially, you let the plonk flow between two high-voltage electrodes, bathing it in a delicious electric field. Much of the research has taken place in China, which is well-known worldwide for the quality of their wines.

Apparently you have to get the voltage and the amount of time right, or the hoped-for tasty vintage will actually become less drinkable; if you pump up the current too much, the plonk will actually cause your head to explode, though a few prisoners have escaped with only having their tongues drop off.

Naturally, this technique will only work if the purported vintage is actually well-made to begin with — if the wine is laced with formaldehyde or lead, it probably won’t work. (Though I’m sure they’re working on that too, and I bet they have a hell of a kick.)

So load up on the cheap wine this holiday season, and let the good times (and electricity) flow!

How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage [New Scientist]. Alas, even electricity is unable to help make Alltop and humor-blogs.com more palatable.