Older Wine in just 2 minutes

Mark Benseman, an electronic engineering graduate from the University of Waikato, has found a way to age wine in just minutes, using an electric field to it.

The idea came after reading a Chinese paper which made claims wine could be aged easily with an electric field, which Professor Jonathan Scott thought was “a load of snake oil”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf2vsL7a20s

After building the machine, and with evidence the process actually worked, Jonathan says the application for wine was realised and now plans are in place to work with other substances.

The potential benefits for the wine industry are varied, and potential ideas around commercialisation were discussed, among which a mobile treatment machine could be used.

There are two metal plates which produce the electrical field and have 20 metres of tubing running between them, where the wine passes through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmbF-uhMAJg

The wine passes through the tubing and electrical field which moves molecules in the wine which speeds up the chemical reaction which is the aging of wine.

While ageing is done by the machine the oaking is not and Mark says there is potential to combine other technology with the ageing process to add more value to commercialisation potential.