I’ve come across the Clef du Vin in several catalogs. The item purportedly is able to simulate the taste of an aged wine simply by dipping the product into the wine one second for each year. To rephrase, say you buy a bottle of 2005 Bordeaux. You want to know how it will taste in 8-10 years time. Dip the Clef du Vin in your glass for 8-10 seconds and the chemical reaction with stimulate the wine to produce its essential aged flavor of itself in 8-10 years time. The Clef du Vin does not age the wine itself, but helps simulate what the wine would taste like with aging. Put yet another way (from Chateau Online), “It will gradually alter the organoleptic qualities (taste, smell, flavours and bouquet) of the wine, in a controlled way.”

Vinum Master Description – Most detailed description I’ve seen thus far of what it is and how it works
Grapevine – Time Magazine article about the Clef du Vin
Amazon.com Listing – Buy it here
Epinions.com – Good review
Clef-Du-Vin.com – Official Web site

Have any experience with it? Please submit your comments and let us know.

Paul and I went to Cité for national wine week (see previous post) on September 27th. I haven’t been to Cité in years; in fact, I worked in the Time Life building for 2 years and never made it down to the restaurant while I was there. Anyway, wine week this year was somewhat lackluster. The wines, though copiously poured, got an overall ‘ho-hum’ assessment from us both. Thankfully, they saved themselves with some outstanding filet mignons.

The Wall Street Journal has a write-up today of the sweeping changes coming to the wine industry in the US, thanks to deregulation of how wine is sold through wholesalers and the state by state upheaval of archaic inter/intra-state rules prohibiting wine sales. I also learned the Costco is the biggest wine seller in the country.

In the end, these changes mean better wine pricing for us.

Interesting article from the NYTimes yesterday that dissects the ‘market moving’ associated with getting a score above or below the 90pt threshold from wine critics, how the 100 pt system was invented, and its shortcomings.

Today’s WSJ has an important article on the rise of wine counterfeiting (of the likes of Sassacaia, Lafite Rothschild, Penfolds Grange). The sad part may be summed up by the last line in the article:

Claudio Gufoni, a 59-year-old wine enthusiast who lives in Santa Croce sull’Arno, east of Pisa, was the client who was duped into buying more than 100 bottles of the bogus Sassicaia. Although prosecutors confiscated most of his fake bottles as evidence, a few were left behind. Mr. Gufoni says he now serves them to unsuspecting guests: “No one has noticed the difference.“