Paul Thomas: The art of winemaking moves into a new age

The wine world has been rocked to its foundations by the news that a Japanese scientist has invented a device that can age wine in the twinkling of an eye.

Hiroshi Tanaka - remember that name - has spent 15 years developing an electrolysis machine that can transform the sourest, nastiest supermarket plonk into liquid velvet. He claims to have succeeded, and hopes to have it on the market early next year.

I won't bore you with the process. If you're anything like me and regard science as a foreign country you wouldn't be any the wiser; I could just as easily be describing the workings of an espresso machine or a desalination plant.

The nitty-gritty is that Tanaka-san's machine can convert four litres of wine a minute. Wine producers will be able to give entire barrels the instant ageing treatment before bottling, and plans are afoot to produce a mini-version for home and restaurant use.

Of course, history is littered with examples of mad scientists, often of the amateur, wild-haired variety, convinced they'd come up with an invention that made the wheel look like a paua shell ashtray.

How many lonely, futile hours have been frittered away in garages and basements in the quest for a perfect mousetrap or a time-travel machine? Filing cabinets in patent offices the world over must bulge with blueprints for outlandish contraptions, most of which will never progress beyond the drawing board.

Besides, most cheap wine isn't built to last - it's meant to be drunk young and you delay at your peril - so it's hard to see how this device can give it a dimension that was never there in the first place.

In fact it sounds suspiciously like a microwave oven which can be a boon to the harried housewife-mother or working couple but should be used sparingly by those who care how their food tastes.

But just imagine if it does work.

For a start, those wine buffs who went to great trouble and expense to acquire a collection, cellar it in a temperature-controlled environment and regularly rotate the bottles to prevent sediment build-up have wasted their time and money.

And what will become of the pseudo-science of oenology with its elaborate rituals and baffling metaphors, an encyclopaedia of theory and practice condensed into a sniff, a sluice and a spit?

Wine snobbery demands to be mocked. My favourite example is a skit written by Monty Python's Eric Idle, which was never performed because it was vetoed by head Python John Cleese, presumably in one of his periodic fits of priggishness.

A preening connoisseur is doing a televised blind tasting. He swirls the golden liquid under his nose and says something like: "Oh yes, now this is good. This is really good. Chablis, of course. There's no mistaking those nutty, buttery flavours and that mineral aftertaste. From Fontenay pres Chablis, I rather suspect."

He takes a measured sip and chuckles knowingly. "Yes, definitely Fontenay. In fact, I can visualise the very patch of ground: a north-facing hillside, limestone soil, rich with fossils. Grand Cru, seven or eight years old; a perfect match for lobster or goat's cheese."

He leans back in his chair anticipating the audience's wide-eyed acclaim. The presenter clears his throat nervously. "Actually, it's wee-wee."

The writer Auberon Waugh was, among his other accomplishments, a wine critic who helped to break down Britain's snobbish resistance to New World wine. He took great pride in having introduced "anal" to the wine critic's lexicon. It was, he insisted, a term of approval.

Waugh's devotion to wine was such that, after writing five novels in his 20s, he abandoned fiction and devised a Life Plan centred on the seven cellars under his Somerset country house.

He resolved to work flat out at his various journalistic endeavours until all seven cellars were full, at which point he would retire to write novels that nobody would want to read and methodically work his way through the wine.

However after filling three-and-a-half cellars, he had to put retirement on hold. A simmering feud came to the boil, forcing him to take over the famous Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph to prevent it falling into his enemy's hands.

In light of Anton Oliver's substantiation of previous claims about an All Black booze culture under John Mitchell, it was heartening to hear Jerry Collins, who seems as engaging off the field as he's fearsome on it, reveal that he's been getting wine appreciation tips from Springbok flanker Schalk Burger, whose family grows grapes in the Western Cape.

While the notion of the man the Wallabies call "Granite" kissing his fingers over a frisky sauvignon blanc might seem far-fetched, the hard men of French rugby have for many years done their level best to soak up Europe's wine lake.

A few years ago an English reporter who accompanied the French team on their train journey to London on the Thursday before a crunch match at Twickenham was shocked by the amount of red wine they put away at lunch.