The number of views may be an indication of demand.
Assume that premoxed / oxidised wine is generally darker in colour and this is detectable even through coloured glass.
I envisage a cool do-nut shaped ring with a battery powered light on one end and a light meter and led display at the other. I pop the ring over the neck of each of my bottles. I read 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 5.6 … Oh dear, 5.6, I grab the fourth bottle to drink now or dispatch to the sink.
Who can build this ? Would it work ?
Anthony.
I bet Kevin harvey has invested in that company and he can tell us.
Certainly more useful than a Krug listening device.
I’d be interested - and I’m sure a few wine companies in the secondary market would also be interested. How would this device account for different glass colors? Or are we just taking a general reading and then comparing to a larger sample - like the rest of the bottles in a case?
Is the first part a true statement?
Is the second part a realistic assumption? or would this alone require technological advancement of sorts?
Alternatively, we could create a Berserker Ring where posters can face up with Klapp after Robert Parker hands out a few 100 pointers.
Interesting idea, Anthony. And Taylor, MTV executives have approached Todd about sponsoring, and me about participating in, a new feature, based upon MTV’s popular Celebrity Death Match, called Wine Reviewer Death Match, which pits wine reviewers against their critics…
Anthony is describing a spectrophotometer that measures absorption of light, and allows determination of concentrations using the Beer-Lambert law. It could easily be calibrated to account for the absorption of the glass itself. I think the problem would be knowing what wavelengths oxidative components are absorbed at, and if you can even tell the difference between one wine that is naturally more “colored” and another wine whose color is due to oxidation. It’s all pretty basic technology.
If this ever happens, we will undoubtedly see Josh Raynolds pull out some impressive 90 point Spanish combos.
I was hoping for a beserker who had experience with arduino boards might give it a try ! Something like this.
http://www.nudatech.com/blog/my-first-arduino-project-light-sensor-and-leds-bar-graph
Maybe I was reading Anthony wrong, but I took his example to mean comparing 4 btls of the same wine, thereby eliminating the color of the glass being at issue, and rendering moot the identification of oxidative elements different absorption rates. Pick your most advanced bottle and try it first. Pretty simple, yet practical when comparing multiple bottle lots.
Any reading of 5.6 or more and then an automatic chastity style lock clamps the top of the bottle so it can’t be thrown into auction or re-sold!
Absolutely it is. In many cases you can pretty much bet that certain wines will be oxidised if you back light the bottle, looking at clarity and colour. I have been to cellars in Burgundy where the vigneron pulls out older whites and will back-light the bottle and discard if they are not happy with the appearance, knowing full well that the bottle will be oxidised. McWilliams still do this with their cellar release ‘Elizabeth’ Semillon and prior to moving to screwcap they threw out 20% of production, now under screwcap they throw out 0% (are you thinking what I’m thinking?, screwcap could solve the premox problem!).
Exactly. You own 12 bottles and try one and find it heading towards premox. You immediately want to find out if any of the other 11 have the same, better or worse fate because you could drink the very slightly premoxed ones now chilled and with only a slight scowl instead of a full blooded curse. They all have the same glass bottle and the wine, if perfect, should all have the same colour.
You may have seen this before but I thought it worth re posting.
from WineLoversPage - Straight talk in plain English about fine wine
"All 14 bottles contain identical samples of a Leasingham Estate 1999 Clare Valley Semillon, all cellared together for a decade. The colors tell the tale that 10 years of aging wrote: They range all the way from watery pale to a dank, dead dark brown.
The bottle on the left, perfect in color (and reportedly in taste), was closed with a sturdy Stelvin-brand metal screw cap. All the others are plugged with a variety of natural and processed cork or synthetic stoppers."
Wow. Thanks, I hadn’t seen that before.
I would like a device that tells me X wine will get premoxed…before I buy it!! I can use a corkscrew to tell me if the wine is spoiled.
A friend of wine did a wine thermometer, like the thing that pops out when the turkey it is done. Not only does it pop up when the wine is ready to drink but it invites him over for dinner. I still have it somewhere.
This is why dealers on the secondary market would be very interested too. A winemaker might be able to tell by back lighting their own bottle, but someone who sees white wines from 100 different producers a month as no baseline - the glass color varies too much between producers.
I thought that I had bought all copies of that picture and the negatives and destroyed them, but I was a striking figure in my youth, wasn’t I?