Wine and age

Age by itself does not make a great wine. In fact, most wines aged more than a few years will turn to vinegar. It isn't just age that adds quality to heartier wines, it's how they change during the process. It's the flavors they draw from the casks they're aged in, it's the minerals in the cave, it's proper blending of varietals by the vintner before casking...I'm not taking the luddite approach saying that technology can't speed or the process or help it along. After all, amarone wines used to need a decade or more to age, and the process has been sped up to less than five with very good reults. But just aging Bully Hill or Yellowtail won't make them great wines.

I do think that people who make good wines will jump at the chance to make their profit margins jump by making their good wine even better in a very short period of time.

Yeah. After all, Richard's Wild Irish Rose tastes as good brand new as it does after ten years.

$1.5 million is not so much when you are trying to increase the price of wine these days. Some French wineries are looking into distilling their less expensive wines and turning them into fuel if the price of oil continues to increase. No joke.

Turning the cheap wine into more expensive wine will increase their value and possibly keep these bottles on the table and out of the gas tank.

This won't increase the price of wines, but it will make them quicker to market, which will have the opposite effect. There is a huge glut of wine on the worldwide market. That is why some of it is being distilled for other uses. Better that, then pour out something that doesn't have a long shelf life. If many of the larger wineries were to employ this device, in one year you would have twice as much wine hitting the market (the naturally aged stuff that is ready for market and the quickly aged 2005 vintage). Prices will not go up, but down. Aging will not drive up the price, it will just make the wine palettable more quickly. I also wonder about the longterm survivablity of these wines. Much of the heartiness of cabs, pinots, burgandies, etc., comes from casking the mash with stems, leaves and other agents to impart tannins and allow for the natural development of preservative sulfites. If these steps are removed, you may have 2005 cabs which go to market and are past prime within a year. That's just terrible.

In my view, the biggest benefit could lie in eliminating the inexorable wait for my home brew!!!.........Anyone got his phone number??

Spend up home brewing is something that even I can embrace!

I meant "Speeding up"