Hello, Friday we were having a glass and a bite with our mates and two friends of theirs. Discussion turned from golf (of which we know next to nothing - you, apparently, use balls, and it is perpetrated outdoors) to wine. One of the friends came upp with this suggestion: How about some sort of indicator on the wine bottle to show its degree of readiness? Something like those "done"-thingies on certain industry raised fowl, you know, a blue spike plops out of a white dohickey means you will not get salmonella from eating it. He envisioned this for wines in the medium range - say SEK 150 and up - that would take kindly to a few years in the cellar. His argument was that, if you only had one bottle, it would be a good thing if you did not discover it had gone over the top, or vice versa, would have really benefited from another year's rest.
The idea as such strikes me as quite funny in a good way. However, what would be the chemicals that one would trace for? To my knowledge, there does not exist any compound in the wine that would mark its maturation.
The next problem would be how to communicate the findings from inside the bottle to the outside (message FROM a bottle, not IN a bottle).
Anybody with an idea?
Cheers
Nils