Qana wedding miracle repeats Or does it? No grapes required
Magic jug makes eaux de eau
by PHILIP WHITE
It had to happen.
Napa man Kevin Boyer, who calls himself a
"somleeay" (it's a bit like nucular) and confesses to be heavily
influenced by his wine marketing Mum, has joined forces with Pom chemist and
wine educator Philip James to produce a clever device which turns water into
"wine".
I use parentheses because no grapes are required.
Claiming this to be in the spirit of the miracle at Qana,
they call their electric amphora device M│M - the Miracle Machine.
Their promotion blurb says "It came about after one too
many glasses of wine over dinner, and a casual remark by Philip (left) that 'Jesus
made water into wine; with all the technology we have available today why can’t
we do the same?'"
They're calling the machine "the world's first
accelerated winemaking device for the home".
Reminds me of a lunch this Philip had nearly thirty years
ago with genius (a word I rarely use) winemaker StepHen Hickinbotham. We were
joking about the Lord's amarone being marketed as a miracle, agreeing that it
was more of an H2O on the dried grapes trick than your actual
turning pure H2O into grape
ethanol of a fine vintage.
Stephen revealed he'd been designing a home winemaking
device which would do pretty much the same trick as the M│M. Before he got close to perfecting this, he died in a plane crash in 1986.
"Winemaking is still considered by most an art.
Secrets are closely guarded," the M│M chaps claim. Their machine obviously still keeps most of
the alchemy under the hat. Its basis is the secret additives - a powder and a
finishing syrup - devised by their team.
The sophisticated M│M propaganda on their website claims that the partners "also
looked at the precise chemical breakdown of some of the finest wines in the
world and realized that just as the scent industry is able to simulate smells, it
is possible to replicate the delicate flavors of highly sought-after vintages."
'45 Romanée-Conti, anybody? Comin' right up!
It appears that the M│M depends on a sealed containment
vessel which incorporates a sugar-measuring device, an oxygenating bubbler, a
bit like you see in a fish tank, and a soundwave generator which pumps vibes
into the container to hasten the polymerisation of the tannins, softening them.
The whole process is managed remotely by an app in your phone.
One can vaguely imagine what's in the additives. Sugar, acid, enzymes, some sorbitol (to
supply viscosity and an illusion of sweetness), colourant, yeast, tannin, flavours,
wood essence and fragrances. The impressive-looking machine seems likely to be
a combination of devices and techniques already extant.
Even the "ultrasonic transducer, positioned directly
underneath the chamber [which] resonates, effectively speeding up the flavor
development of the wine" sounds a lot like a machine I played with six
years ago. It seemed extremely expensive for what it did. It was supposed to
"age" real bottled wine between decanting and service. As far as I
could see, it merely flattened the aromatic, flavour and tannin profiles of
anything put in it; I recall the procedure taking about forty minutes. I felt it may have industrial uses on a large
scale to sort out specific tanks of poor wine, making them perhaps more useful
if blended with fresher wine, but couldn't see any serious wine lover exposing
a good Bordeaux or a Grange to its destructive alchemy.
After a few weeks, I sent it back.
Kevin Boyer
And that wild M│M claim about the synthetic perfume business ? I've just
gotta assert that as a total fragrance slut I'll guarantee that the most beautiful scents
are painstakingly composed by top noses from concentrates of real fruits, flowers, barks and spices; real musk from the arse of the musk deer
or ambergris from sperm whale chunder make the synthetics smell like Coke.
Hickinbotham's machine looked like a stainless steel
pressure cooker. It had a removable lid which sealed tight. Between the lid and
the vessel was a removable inflexible steel filter screen on top of food-grade
polymer membrane. The vessel had an inlet and outlet. You'd attach a hose from
your kitchen tap to the inlet, which admitted water to circulate between the
membrane and the vessel, to adjust the temperature of the whole berry ferment. Warmer,
faster ferment? Turn the hot tap up. Cool it? Slow it down? Use cold. The water simply
circulated between the membrane and the vessel, and exited through the release
valve. It never entered the wine.
Stephen's device was designed to teach people how simple
winemaking really is. He planned to sell you good varietal wine grapes frozen with
some yeast in a Cryovac bag. You could buy Cabernet, Pinot, Chardonnay, a
blend: whatever flavour you wanted.
It worked vaguely like this: You'd remove the lid and the
strainer and put the sealed bag of grapes, freshly defrosted, in above the impermeable polymer membrane. You'd push it down til the grape bag filled the
vessel, and the membrane formed a second lining between the bag and the vessel.
Then you'd put the lid back on, and reseal the unit.
When the ferment was complete, you'd take the lid off and
cut open the top of the bag of fermented grapes, leaving the bag in place, then replace the filter
screen and tighten the lid. You'd close the exit
valve, and, using mains pressure through the inlet, fill the gap between the
membrane and the container with water, and leave the tap on. This pressure would gradually push the fermented must up through the filter
screen and out through a valve in the lid, leaving the skins behind. You could
control how hard you pressed with your tap. You'd then finish your ferment and
do your cold-settling and clarification in a glass container, using
the fridge, learning every step of the real winemaking procedure as you went - any week of the year.
Forgive me Bacchus, but you could even add oak chips if
you had lumberjack tendencies.
Barely a day
goes by that I don't wish I could consult Stephen for gossip or advice. He had
an astonishing winemaking pedigree. His grandfather Alan "Hick" Robb
Hickinbotham founded the Roseworthy wine science course; his father Ian had a
historical career winemaking with great companies like Wynns, Kaiser Stuhl and
Penfolds. His uncle Alan, the housing developer, planted the famous
Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard.
Ian, who
still lives with his wife, Jude, in Melbourne, worked with David Wynn
perfecting the bladder pack which was based on the old goat, sheep or pig skin idea. In its plastic form it had been
used for years as a vinegar and oil container in Italy. Although he worked hard introducing the idea into Australia, it was not the
invention of Tom Angove, as is popularly presumed.
Ian was also the first person known to deliberately induce, maintain and monitor malolactic fermentations in Coonawarra in 1951 and 52.
Ian was also the first person known to deliberately induce, maintain and monitor malolactic fermentations in Coonawarra in 1951 and 52.
Stephen's
brother Andrew and his partner Terryn run the Hickinbotham of Dromana winery and
vineyard on Mornington Peninsula. This is fitting, as most of the early vineyards
on that bonnie Peninsula were planted under contract by the Hickinbotham
family, after they had been largely responsible for re-kindling and encouraging
the now-thriving wine world around Geelong.
Just as there's
contention about whoever it is that claims to do things first, there's argument
about whether Solomon or Koheleth or somebody else wrote the Old
Testament book of Ecclesiastes. But there can never be doubt of the truth and
wisdom of verse nine of its first chapter.
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
which is done is that which
shall be done: and there is no
new thing under the sun."
I'll raise a toast to Bacchus on that account. If he
insists on the '45 Romanée-Conti, make it a real one.
To read of Stephen Hickinbotham's theory of deliberately making red wines with a little botrytis, and how Max Schubert regarded his heretical stance, click here. This is pertinent in tricky botrytis years like 2011 and, in some places, even 2014.
To read of Hickinbotham's Cab Mac invention, using very big plastic bags to ferment an Australian-style Beaujolais, click here.
To read of Hickinbotham's Cab Mac invention, using very big plastic bags to ferment an Australian-style Beaujolais, click here.
To read the latest of my long string of rewrites about Jesus making the wine at the wedding, click here.
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