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Your Brain on Nano-capsules
Reset your mind to program your wine

            Are you a rational person; guided by your thoughtful intellect rather than your impulsive heart? Ha! As brain science explains it today, our conscious mind has about as much control over our actions as a little kid in the back seat with an orange plastic Fisher Price steering wheel has over the car. The way it works is first your subconscious makes a choice (I want HIM!) and then your conscious brain justifies it (so what if he killed and pureed his first three wives? It’ll be different with me!).

            The greatest human fear is purportedly neither death, nor public speaking, but change. So, when our subconscious rebels at something new, our prefrontal lobes scramble to invent reasons why changing is a bad idea.

            That’s why you see so much irrational resistance to developments in wine. Wine might be stuffy, but at least we can count on it being stuffy. So when confronted with the very logical and overdue transition from stone-age corks to more practical screw-caps we react as though grandma had up and joined a Las Vegas burlesque show.

            When England’s Sainsbury supermarket chain recently announced the introduction of plastic wine bottles, Simon Berry, chairman of the 300-year-old wine merchant Berry Brothers & Rudd, issued this statement: "I want to taste it first. Frankly, I’m rather skeptical."

            Of what? Plastic? Didn’t he see The Graduate? Has he never dropped a bottle on the sidewalk, or carried a half-case up six flights? Is he blind to the environmental benefits of lighter, thinner containers (a big selling point in the UK)? Nah, he’s just human.

            Still, Mr. Berry had better keep the smelling salts handy lest he encounter the onslaught of decent wine in such modern containers as cans! And juice boxes with bendy-straws attached! Or the new Kellogg’s-like variety packs, offering two mini bottles each of chardonnay, cabernet and merlot.

            What would he make of Tulipa; a line of Australian and California wines packaged in single-serving, foil-sealed glasses? Or New York’s upscale Restaurant Daniel which serves Dtour brand Macon-Village or Côtes-du-Rhône from its own tube-shaped cardboard box?

            The bag-in-box actually makes an excellent wine container. Invented fifty years ago as a disposable package for battery acid, it contracts as the volume of wine decreases, keeping harmful air from entering. Not just convenient and long-lasting, it also purportedly helps drinkers control their wine consumption. But it’s a far cry from the cobwebbed bottle of yesteryear.

            What would Mr. Berry think about Pocket Shots, single-servings of liquor in flexible mini, bottle-shaped pouches? True, “Wine” is not yet among the flavors offered, but no doubt it will be.  Among other attributes, the company emphasizes the product’s “stuffability,” especially pertinent now that airport security has begun questioning everything from gel soles in running shoes to the "wonder” that pads a bra.

            Imagine if he met the group of Dutch students, led by the aptly named Harm van Elderen, who invented, for their senior project, an instant powdered cocktail called Booze2Go. In addition to its Jell-o-like convenience, non-liquid booze in the Netherlands dodges alcohol taxes and can be legally sold to kids under eighteen.

            If your subconscious recoils at these modest changes to the conventional wine bottle, get a load of Kraft’s new project, Programmable Food, which will allow you to choose your wine after you buy it. Let’s say you fancy a deep-purple beverage with nuances of current jam and dusty earth. Say you want to fortify it with vitamin C and Omega-3 fatty acids. While you’re at it, why not add a little caffeine for zip, Valerian for calm, and Viagra for, well you know.

            What you do is zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter. This activates certain nano-capsules--each 2,000 times smaller than the width of one hair--containing the chosen chemicals, which then dissolve into the brew. Meanwhile, all other possible ingredients pass, unused and still encapsulated, through your system.

            Weird, yes. But try to embrace the change. After all, even the bottle is only a few hundred years old. In fact, for true purists there's only one acceptable container: the grape skin itself.   

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