Wine Hackers Are Making Wine Without Grapes or Fermentation
Summary
But, Ava is sidestepping that whole way of doing things by taking straight ethanol and mixing it with chemical flavour compounds like ethyl hexanoate, which would give the end product notes of pineapple, for example. According to New Scientist, Ava has succeeded in making a synthetic replica of Moscato dAsti, a sparkling Italian white wine, and now have their sights set on Dom Pérignon. Ava, which proudly boasts of creating the "the worlds first designer wines," on their website, is now taking orders for a limited batch of synthetic 1992 Dom Pérignon Champagne. "Its nonsense, to be honest with you," Alain Deloire, director of the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre at Charles Sturt University in Australia, told New Scientist. And while grapeless wine might seem sacrilegious to lovers of bubbles, a $50 price tag for the fake version of what would easily cost ten times more might make it extremely appealing to those not hung up on process.