A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH
Align your molecules; change your life!
Wine breeds insecurity, which begets suckers. You can’t fool all the people all the time but magnets will get you pretty close.
Place your bottle on magnetic coasters from Wine Cellar Express or The Perfect Sommelier, and in thirty minutes or less, it will age to perfection; like it had been cellared for years!
Snap the Wine Clip around the neck of your bottle and six "rare earth magnets” turn big, ugly, impure molecules into charming small ones.
Now I’ve always understood that smoother tannins are long molecules, too big to fit into your receptors that perceive them as bitter. But what do I know, me and my spoil-sport, fact-driven left brain?
The Wine Enhancer is NOT a magnet, they assure me, but that's all they will say because the technology is a Trade Secret. It consists of a heavy epoxy disc, containing a copper coil and a "perfect combination of eleven carefully selected semi-precious gems and minerals." By far the most ambitious of the devices, it not only softens tannins but virtually eliminates red wine headaches, acid reflux and hangovers. Plus, it rejuvinates old, dead wines, opened for days.
The claims are clearly true, because they invoke serious names like Nicola Tesla and Wilhelm Reich. Furthermore, important words are Capitalized: The Enhancer collects, amplifies and broadcasts Life Supporting Energies in Perfect Coherence. The Sommelier’s Base and Top Magnets create a Flux Path of Electrically Charged Molecules. Don’t be embarrassed if the science goes over your head. Essentially, you’ve got these rowdy molecules all doing their own private Watusi, when along comes this magnet/gismo and synchs them all up like a kick line of Rockettes. Then, presto, your wine has more fruit, less acid, a bigger nose, a better healthcare plan and can go from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds.
Sound silly? The MagicFlavor Plug-in Magnetizing Dispenser should clear things up: “Our device is having a di-pole where the fluid will be cut through the magnetic field 90 degree with respect to the line of field. Once it is cut through the field, an ionization is induced on the molecules, hence each group of phenol will lose a hydrogen and have a (minus) charge. This effect will course the ionized groups of molecules to form a virtual chain which will be physically similar to the aged wine.”
I couldn’t have said it better. In fact, I couldn’t have said it at all.
The magic of magnets is not just for wine. The fuel magnet, for instance, realigns molecules in your gas tank for more efficient combustion with less exhaust. Magnopulse (as seen on TV!) makes ulcer bandages, a dog bowl magnet (“given the choice, your pet will always choose to drink magnetic water”) and a specially positioned lace-undies magnet that helps the ladies act civilized during that time of the month.
Given the awesome power of the things, surely they could multi-task a little. Why not strap one on and simultaneously cure your arthritis, lift your mood and end the shame of immature tannins, all without changing polarity?
There are other miraculous ways to age wine, including electrolysis and Eisch Glaskult’s deceptively simple Breathable Glass: pour in wine and in just two-to-four minutes you’ll swear it’s been aerated for hours!
And yet, if there’s a plague of immature wines out there I’ve missed it. These days, with some 95% of wines released ready to drink, it’s hard to find one that can even survive, much less benefit from aging.
Besides, I’ve had excellent results with home remedies. The other day, for instance, I opened a bottle of Ridge Zinfandel within range of my computer, BlackBerry and Jabra Blue-Tooth headset and a remarkable thing happened: the next morning, left-over wine in my glass tasted like it had been exposed to oxygen for twelve hours!
One thing I can claim unequivocally about magnets: if you experiment with their effects on enough wines, you, yourself will end up horizontally aligned with Earth's magnetic field.
Update:
After this column appeared in newspapers, I was contacted by magnet companies who brought into question--among other things--my scholarship, parentage, anatomical abilities and future lifespan
I got a very nice email, though, from the makers of The Perfect Sommelier, who sent me their gizmo to try, which I did, on eight wines ranging from zingy young whites to hoary red monsters.
The verdict : it definitely does something. Not what I've come to know as aging; more like softening. While their many testimonials claim enhanced fruit aromas and flavors, in my experiments it mostly muted acids and tannins and turned everything....smooth. To my taste, it stripped vibrancy--turning three-dimensional, if sometimes awkward, wines into 2-D generics.
Considering that's precisely what heaps of drinkers want--as oceans of bland Merlot and Chardonnay will testify--perhaps they're on to something. And it is pretty cool. I plan to try it on other things like water, orange juice or maybe shampoo. Most of all, though, I want to stick my head between the magnets and feel my tangled-up thoughts align themselves quickly into smooth sentences on the page. Now that's a product I could get behind.
Wine Cellar Express
www.winecellarexpress.com
The Perfect Sommelier
www.perfectsommelier.com
The Wine Enhancer
www.lifeforceenhancements.com
The Wine Clip
www.thewineclip.com
Magnopulse
www.magnopulse.com
MagicFlavor Plug-in Magnetizing Dispenser
www.alibaba.com
Breathable Glass
www.eisch.de
