What is it about magnets that amazes the pseudoscientists so much? The good magnetic energy of my Magneto-Tex blanket will cure my back pain; but I need a Q-Link pendant to protect me from the bad magnetism created by household devices. Reader Bill Bingham (oddly enough, the guy who used to read the Shipping Forecast) sends in news of the exciting new Wine Magnet: ‘Let your wine “age” several years in only 45 minutes! Place the bottle in the Wine Magnet! The Wine Magnet then creates a strong magnetic field that goes to the heart of your wine and naturally softens the bitter taste of tannins in “young” wines.’
I was previously unaware of the magnetic properties of wine, but this explains why I tend to become aligned with the earth’s magnetic field after drinking more than two bottles. The general theory on wine maturation – and it warms the cockles of my heart to know there are people out there studying this – is that it’s all about the polymerisation of tannins, which could conceivably be accelerated if they were all concentrated in local pockets: although surely not in forty-five minutes.
But this exciting new technology seems to be so potent – or perhaps unpatentable – that it is being flogged by at least half a dozen different companies. Cellarnot, marketing the almost identical ‘Perfect Sommelier’, even has personal testimonies from ‘Susan’ who works for the Pentagon, ‘Maggie, Editor, Vogue’, and a science professor, who did not want to be named but who, after giving a few glasses to some friends, exclaimed, ‘The experiment definitely showed that the TPS is everything that it claims to be.’ He’s no philosopher of science. But perhaps all of these magnetic products will turn out to be interchangeable. Maybe I can even save myself some cash, and wear my MagneForce magnetic insoles (‘increases circulation; reduces foot, leg and back fatigue’) to improve the wine after I’ve drunk it.
And most strangely of all, none of these companies seems to be boasting about having done the one simple study necessary to test their wine magnets. As always, if any of them want advice on how to do the stats on a simple double-blind randomised trial (which could, after all, be done pretty robustly in one evening with fifty people) – and if they can’t find a seventeen-year-old science student to hold their hand – I am at their disposal.