Effects of Vibration on Wine Aging Sender: Ian

Salut-Hi Mike,

Welcome to the newsgroup.

le-on Wed, 05 Oct 2005 03:52:26 GMT, tu disais-you said:-

If, in my turn, I may correctly quote Voltaire "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the rest your right to say it".

However when you preface a post with as intolerant a remark as "to hell with the scientists" and then proceed to make a statement which has more to do with urban myth than anything else, you can expect ME and others to exercise our right to free speech too.

Irrelevant. We're not talking about how to cure a case of verbal diarrhoea or how to run a hot water pipe. Cite me one reputable vinous authority who says a) that vibration is as important as temperature control, and b) gives some kind of logical explanation for it.

I'm unimpressed with the fact that it's your business. I've met any number of people working in the wine business whose only common characteristic is a deep and abiding ignorance about their business. As for your "authorities" ...

Name a couple.

The problem with standing on the shoulders of giants is that you have that much further to fall when they are revealed to have feet of clay.

Lay explanations may sound to the lay as having more sense, but nevertheless can be false.

Indeed. Although you're over simplifying. Part of the process involves the polymerisation of tannins - using more or less lay language. A bit like the reactions which make perspex from methyl methacrylate, or polythene from ethylene.

Give one example. It plum just doesn't happen.

Now you're entering MY domaine. I'm an ex chef. A broken hollandaise is an emulsion which separates. When unbroken it's in a meta stable state, so it's simply returning to the stable state of oil and water not being mixed together. As such this is a purely physical phemonenon, there's no chemical change taking place. As it happens I'm not even sure that vibration will have a consistent effect. I suspect that ultrasound vibration will tend to create-recreate the emulsion in fact.

If anything, I'd expect vibration, long term violent vibration to cause the tannins to remain in suspenders - err - suspension. But here we're talking about quite another phenomenon. In this group, where in general - with the possible exception of Mike Scarpitti - the level of intelligence is fairly high, you must expect a healthily sceptical atbreastude and should expect to have to justify what you say, I'm afraid.

I recommend as reading material "Eight keys to Eden" by Mark Clifton (iirc). His thesis is that there are many different ways of arriving at the truth and cites "Relying on eminent authority, without question and without demur" as being the most primitive and least accurate. Although it was written as science fiction, it was for many years a course book for degree level philosophy students in London University. I might add that he's equally critical of the second "key" which is to "Refuse the statement of eminent authority - without reason and without exception".

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