Ernest Hemingway famously said that “wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”
However we suspect that the author wasn’t talking about a £1.97 bottle of plonk from the bargain bin at your local petrol station.
Yes, there’s no denying that there’s a difference in taste – and quality – between cheap and expensive wine.
One can make you feel as if you’re sat on a sun-drenched terrace in Italy, the other can make your lips pucker and your face shrink into a wizened old walnut.
However it doesn’t have to be that way anymore, thanks to this handy little hack – and it takes less than a minute to do.
All you have to do is pour your cheap plonk into a blender and whizz it up for about 30 seconds.
Once done, let the bubbles subside and then serve it up.
Your vino will apparently taste like a high-end vintage… for a fraction of the cost.
According to fans of the trend, popping wine in the blender helps to age it five years in 30 seconds – and that exposing young wine to so much air can quickly soften tannins, a natural substance that gives wine its dry taste.
Speaking to ABC News about the trend, Marcy Roth – the owner of Bacchus and Venus Wines in California – explained that blending wine acts as a form of hyperdecanting.
“Decanting was traditionally done to separate the settlements from the wine so you wouldn't end up with hunks of grape skin in your glass or your teeth,” Roth said.
“It also opens up the wine and aerates it, allowing more of the flavour and aromas to come forth and to show their most finessed polish side.”
Think smoother, more complex flavours.
The folks at Modernist Cuisine decided to put the hack to the test, running a double-blind controlled wine test with 14 wine experts.
“When we asked them which samples they preferred, only two of the 14 judges were able to distinguish a difference repeatedly,” they wrote of their experiment’s results.
“Both of those tasters consistently preferred the wine that had gone through the blender.”
That’s right; the hyper-decanted wine proved to be a hit with the sommeliers – so it seems safe to assume that novices and winos alike will be just as fond of the blender-blitzed stuff.
We recommend cracking open a few bottles and putting it to the test when your friends pop round. And be sure to have a camera ready to capture the looks on their faces when you pop the blender on…
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