Tune your wine with nanotechnology?

[Robin Garr]

Somehow I'm having a hard time getting my mind around this concept. (From <I>The Guardian</I> via Nanowerk (Hawaii) ...

<B>Are you ready for your nanotechnology engineered wine?</b>

(Nanowerk News) Are you ready for your programmable wine - maybe a pico-pinot or a nano-nebbiolo? Or want to take the red out of your red wine? Welcome to the world of nanofoods. Two recent articles on a South African wine website and a UK newspaper shed light on what the large food manufacturers are planning to do with food. Its mostly based on nano-encapsulation technology that will make nanotechnology engineered foods a reality – a new world of unlimited choices to some, Frankenfood to others.

Take wine for example.

Researchers at US food giant Kraft have developed a colorless, tasteless liquid in the lab that consumers will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what color and flavor you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter. This will activate nano-capsules - each one about 2,000 times smaller than the width of a hair - containing the necessary chemicals for your choice of drink: green-hued, blackcurrant-flavoured with a touch of caffeine and omega-3 oil, say.

Unactivated nano-capsules pass through the body and are excreted while those switched on by Kraft’s microwaves will impart taste, flavor, appearance and even nutritional content to a designer drink. Feel like a glass of Sauvignon Blanc? Switch on the green peppers (capsicum if you feel in an Aussie or pretentious South African mood). Syrah? Dial up some wood smoke, sweaty saddles and spice.

"Goodbye cork taint, hello programmable alcohol levels – nanotechnology can deliver solutions to the age-old problems of wine" writes Neil Pendock.
Already in use in brewing and dairy production are nano-filters - screens so small they can filter out micro-organisms and even viruses. In lab experiments with these nanofilters, the color has been removed from red wine, turning it into white.

Nano-encapsulation of flavor molecules will allow chefs to accurately determine how spicy they wish a dish to be perceived and tune it to a diner’s preferences, or even allow nano-capsules to be selectively activated during a meal. Activation by wine is one example.
If that's too much for you, maybe the scientists at Kraft will create a special beverage for you called “traditional wine”...

Reminds me of food replicators from Star Trek, though this is probably closer to the machine Arthur Dent tries to get tea from in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Long story short, everything the machine spits out tastes the same, no matter what you ask for [he's trying to get a good cup of tea and it always comes out bland and generic].

Hmmm ... quick flash just came into my head: Maybe nanotechnology will be the answer to engineering the viticultural holy grail that so many have been clamoring for: i.e. a fully disease-immune, winter-hardy red-wine-producing vinifera vine. Maybe?

WOW Robin. I am not sure how I feel about drinking NANO wine... I think it would certainly take away a lot of the enjoyment of experiencing the "terroir" and the tradition, as well as culture of wine...they are such big factors and really play an important role in my whole experience of wine drinking.

Sheesh...what will they come up with next? A car that parallel parks itself? (which, btw, I saw a commercial for yesterday!) Crazy world we live in!

The New York Times had an interesting feature on the field last year:

Most of the hoopla and a lot of the promise for nanotechnology lies in other industries, including electronics, energy and medicine. But the first generation of nanotechnology-based food industry products, including synthetic food colorings, frying oil preservatives and packaging coated with antimicrobial agents, has quietly entered the market.

The commercial uses of the technology now add up to a $410 million sliver of the $3 trillion global food market, according to Cientifica, a British market research firm that specializes in nanotechnology coverage. Cientifica forecasts that nanotechnology’s share will grow to $5.8 billion by 2012, as other uses for it are developed.

Mindful of the adverse reaction from some consumers over the introduction of genetically engineered crops, the food industry hopes regulators will come up with supportive guidelines that will also allay consumers’ fears. That has put a spotlight on the Food and Drug Administration’s first public hearing today on how it should regulate nanotechnology, with a portion of the agenda specifically about food and food additives. No policy changes are expected this year.

“To their credit, the F.D.A. is trying to get a handle on what’s out there,” said Michael K. Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union, one of 30 groups that have signed up to speak at the meeting.

But coping with nanotechnology will be a daunting challenge for the agency, according to a report last week by a former senior F.D.A. official, whose analysis was sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington policy group. Michael R. Taylor, a former deputy commissioner for policy at the agency, said the F.D.A. lacked the resources and, in the case of cosmetics, dietary supplements and food, the full legal authority needed to protect consumers and also foster innovation.

Industry representatives and analysts are worried that nanotechnology will suffer the same fate as genetic engineering, which was quickly embraced as a breakthrough for drug makers but has been fiercely opposed, especially in Europe, when used in crops, fish and livestock.

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Read a similar article in my local paper
Here’s one way to look at this. This type of nanotechnology is just one application of a biotechnology process. Fermentation (brewing beer, making wine), making bread or pickling foods, (which man has been doing for thousands of years), is in a sense, just that a biotechnology process. Thus fermentation of wine is one of the oldest biotechnology process performed by man (unknowingly at first). By the mid 1800s (with the development of better microscopes) man discovered that living micro-organisms such as yeast and bacteria were responsible for producing these desired products. A little latter on we discovered it wasn’t the living cells themselves, but the molecular components that they manufacture are responsible for producing the desired product.

Salute