Photo reference: Laser Wine illumination. Quality Improvement. Photo by Serguei Kisselev in April 2020.
Today, I want to tell the story of my “experiments” with laser and wine.
Some time ago we were visiting our relatives. We were staying with them for a couple of weeks. As emergency travel medicine, I take a mobile laser device with me – it is very handy to have if minor injuries, flu like symptoms or stomach problems occur.
One night, when my wife and my cousin were visiting their friends, my cousin’s husband brought home a cask of homemade wine which was given to him by his friend. While we were waiting for our wives to return, we decided to try the wine. It wasn’t bad, but wasn’t the best either. At some stage we were talking about medicine in general, and lasers in particular. After a few drinks, a bright idea popped into our minds, and we decided to see if the laser had any effect on the wine. It did not take much time to design the “study” and start our experiment. We had two glasses of wine, one – illuminated by the laser and the other was not.
To eliminate any bias, one of us illuminate the wine, while the other person left the room. When the person came back and tasted the wine, it was then time to swap roles, and the other person left while two more glasses were placed and again one was illuminated without the other’s knowledge.
The question we wanted to answer was simple; does the laser change the taste of the wine?
The answer was simple – yes. Both of us noticed a difference: better aroma, flavour and taste of the sample illuminated by the laser.
To continue our research, we decided that we need an unbiased party to test our theory. So we poured two more glasses of wine for our wives to try when they returned home, one being illuminated, and the other not. Of course, they were unaware about our “investigations”. As we predicted, both of them chose the laser illuminated sample as the better tasting.
After disclosing the results of our experiment to our wives and brief discussions, we unanimously decided that laser positively affects the quality of the wine and perhaps it is worth it to have a handy dandy laser device around to make your boozy nights better.