Glitter Wine Is Here!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Conjectural Technology Laboratories announces breakthrough grape variety that produces intense colour effects in wine

By Fal Ernian, Vinotas News Service

April 1, 2018

British Columbia, Canada – Conjectural Technology Laboratories, a division of Tim Vandergrift Consulting and Communications LLC has released a wine based on a new grape variety genetically designed to produce a novel colour effect.

oooh, shiny
Shimmering Sauvignon

The grape variety is a cross between Sauvignon Blanc and another non-grape fruit, Pollia Condensata, commonly called the Marble Berry.

The metallic colour of the fruit comes from quantum effects rather than pigment

 

Back in 2008, Conjectural Technologies’ lead scientist, Professor Corey Irwin was looking at the reflectivity of wine grapes when he accidentally included a sample of  the tropical plant in his magnetic resonance cylcotron.

The world’s only Magnetic Resonance Cyclotron

“Frankly,” says Professor Corey, “They were part of a table arrangement in my office that caught in the sleeve of my lab coat. I didn’t notice them because the berries are tiny and the colour is so strong that they don’t actually look like real fruit, more like crazy ball-bearings.”

But the results from the test showed otherwise, and the fruit’s surface reflects nearly 50% of the light that hits it–vitis vinifera grapes reflect between one and two percent–due to the surface composition of the skin. “It’s as though the fruit is composed of nothing but tiny little mirrors, all over it!” explains the Professor.

Sensing the potential for a revolution in the appearance of wine, the team at Conjectural Technologies launched into a genetic cross-breeding program, using Crispr-Cas 9 genome editing technology. With CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) “spacer” sequences are transcribed into short RNA sequences  capable of guiding the system to matching sequences of DNA. When the target DNA is found, Cas9  binds to the DNA and cuts it, activating the targeted gene.

There were some early issues with genetically modifying fruit with this technique, but eventually the lab overcame them.

Chief Disruption Officer and Lead winemaker at TVCC-Kitworld, Tim Vandergrift is delighted with the results.

CDO Tim Vandergrift, looking over his experimental vineyard

“This is a real game changer. For thousands of years wine has been red, white or pink. Well, brown too, if you forget and leave the top of the fermenter open. But now we have the ability to change its colour, not with dyes or pigments, but with the harnessed power of quantum physics and Genetically Modified Organisms!. By using gene editing and forcing together the sequences of pollia with Sauvignon Blanc and certain key sequences of hagfish and African land snails we were able to produce a grape that not only reflects more light, but has the viscosity to hold the reflectivity in suspension, so it doesn’t just fall out during fining, or settle on the bottom of the glass.”

Vandergrift admits that the wine is slightly different from standard grape wines, including a textural change. “The hagfish and snail genes are there to provide a colloidal gel that keeps the reflective particles from binding to anything else. It does make the wine viscous, but it’s not too gooey–it has exactly the same viscosity as transmission fluid, and once you get used to it, it’s really nice.”

The new wine, tentatively called ‘Quantum White’ will be available for commercial release on April 1, 2019. Expect it to be in high demand, as in addition to providing a pleasing flavour and aroma, it is expected to be an excellent substitute for Dexron III transmission fluid.

A New Leaf

Renewal and redemption

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
–The Buddha

They say things never stay the same, and they’re right. I’ve made some recent changes in my life, and I’m eager to share them with you. After a long period of self-reflection I realized that my carefree days of spreading the word about making your own wine and brewing your own beer are just a phase I was going through, and those days and many others needed to end.

Out, vile liquor

Accordingly, I’ve emptied out my barrels, taken all of my cases of wine to the dump, poured my kegs down the drain and had all of my brewing equipment crushed at a scrapyard, so it could never again be used to make alcohol.

How could you eat something with a face like that?

In addition to this, I’ve discarded my unhealthy addiction to eating meat, and my entire diet is now Paleo-Vegan. Tofu tastes better than steak! I’ve also stopped using caffeine, and I’ve gotten all of the chemicals and GMO’s out of my house, because I don’t want to catch autism.

How did I ever think those things were fun?

I’ve also gotten rid of all of my guns, my motorcycle, and my gardening tools–those pursuits are vanity, and gardens should grow wild, free of the hand of man.

Chad is such a good guru

My next steps? I’m going to a ashram to get tested for Gluten poisoning, and then I’m getting my vaccinations reversed. When that’s done, I’ll be a leaf on the wind, watch me soar!

I’ll also be converting this blog into an information centre for how you too can change your life, and I’ll be deleting all of my previous posts that deal with the vanity of the world and praising the eightfold path to righteousness all day long. I invite you to join me: discard all of your wine, beer, steaks, whisky, fancy toys and clothes and cars, and live simply, as nature intended. There is plenty of space here in my new home under the bridge.

Be happy!

Have a blessed day.

 

Announcement: New Kit Facility For Tim Vandergrift

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tim Vandergrift Announces New Wine Kit Production Facility, KitWorld Inc.

By Fal Ernian, Vinotas News Service

April 1, 2016

Modesto, Ca – Canadian company Tim Vandergrift Consulting and Communications Inc. announced today that it has finished construction on a 200,000 square foot processing facility for grapes, juices and concentrate, and will be releasing its new wine kits this month.

kITWORLD OH YEAH
Cellar A, one of sixteen cryogenic tank farms

Construction of the facility, underwritten by private equity firm Lord-Buckley Capital, began in 2014 and final inspections and certifications were completed in March, during which a test run of thirty thousand kits was processed. Officials in the California Department of Food and Agriculture have certified the facility as fully operational and KitWorld Inc. goes into production today.

External storage for temporary processing
External storage for temporary processing

TVCC expects this facility to open up the US home winemaking market and widen its customer base by more than two million users.

CDO Tim Vandergrift, looking over his facility
CDO Tim Vandergrift, looking over his facility

“If we look at the Canadian market for wine kits”, says Chief Disruption Officer Tim Vandergrift, “It’s 20% of total sales, domestic and import–literally, for every case of wine opened in Canada on any day, two of those bottles were made by consumers: there’s not much to do in the land of moose and snow except to make wine and enjoy socialised medicine, ha ha! In the USA the total is far lower–despite the fact that the USA has a quarter of a billion people of legal drinking age, fewer than 7 million bottles are made by consumers at home. That’s less than 0.15% of the total wine consumed. Our initial goal is to raise that to 1% of the total, a 666% increase, and long term we want Americans to experience the drinking level of the average Canadian, and capture 20% of the US market, and net our company the largest share of the beverage industry in history!”

The World's Foremost Authority
The World’s Foremost Authority

TVCC began planning for the facility early on, hiring Conjectural Technology’s esteemed winemaker Professor Corey Irwin, the world’s foremost authority and co-inventor of the formal tennis shoe according to a post on https://tennisracquets.com/. Professor Irwin’s knowledge and guidance allowed the facility to be completed in record time, with over 220 varieties of wine ready for production.

Professor Irwin planned the new facility for continuous expansion. “Our plant will allow for the processing of ten million pounds of grapes per day, with storage for twenty million gallons of concentrate and juices in a state of the art cryogenic cellar. The world’s largest HST treatment system, combined with nano-scale obfuscating filtration, continuous flow gamma irradiation and a full-run DMDC inline injector will make wine juices shelf stable for up to twenty years, allowing wider distribution and the ability to take advantage of price fluctuations to hedge against crop issues, like when any of our competitors try to buy grapes.”

Running DMDC Injector/Gramma Irradiator unit
Running DMDC Injector/Gamma Irradiator unit

Perhaps the most exciting innovation is KitWorld’s partnership with aerospace company Fukaze’s drone division to bring kits directly to consumer’s homes within 24 hours of ordering.

“We had to develop an entirely new type of drone to be able to vector a payload of nearly sixty pounds,” explains Fujin Shinatobe, Flight Operations Manager for Fukaze Drones. “New battery technology and powerful permanent magnet motors allowed us to construct the A-10 drone, dubbed, ‘The Winehog’. We actually built it like a wine kit with a drone sticking out of it as opposed to a drone carrying a wine kit.”

De-militarized version of this drone will be used.
De-militarized version of this drone will be used.

With initial capacity at four thousand drones scalable to ten thousand in the first year and twenty thousand in the second,  Kitworld expects to meet 100% of US demand for consumer-produced wine going forward, and plans to expand to Europe and Asia by 2020.

More information is expected to be released following a shareholders meeting on April 2nd, 2016.

About Tim Vandergrift Consulting and Communications:

Founded in 2014, Tim Vandergrift Consulting and Communications is a White Rock-based marketing and brand-strategy firm in the beverage industry. It specialises in wholesome, healthy, wine lifestyle promotions and is committed to using only free-range imagery to create dialogue and market products for its clients. It has clients in countries and is 100% gluten-cruelty free.

Contact:

To learn more about KitWorld, please contact

Sue Donym, Media Relations

600 Yosemite Blvd, Modesto, CA 95354, United States

Office: (949) 717-3877

SueDonym@KitWorld.com

NEW PRODUCT RELEASE, TIM VANDERGRIFT WINE KITS

April 1, 2015

Conjectural Technology Laboratories, a division of Tim Vandergrift Worldwide, is excited to announce the ultimate kit winemaking product, one that will revolutionise both the the use and the appreciation of wine. A decade of research and development has produced the ultimate device for detecting and defining the most subtle nuances of wine, the Beverage Vaporiser.

The Beverage Vaporiser system (also known as the Volcano for it’s cone-shaped appearance) allows the user to

  • Drink wine as young as 10 days old
  • Taste 100% of the nuances of any wine, regardless of type or quality
  • Identify not only grape variety and style like a wine professional, but even to name the terroir, region grown and even the vineyard, with no training or study!
volcano-vaporizer
System shown: red wine vaporiser, white wine vaporiser and two Vaporbotas.

“The concept is actually very simple”, says Dr. Ann Credulous, Director of the Conjectural Technology Lab for Tim Vandergrift. “Wine is a solution of organic compounds, with many volatile fractions–esters, ketones, aldehydes, thiols, monoterpenes, pyrazines, etc. For the most part The majority of volatile compounds responsible for aroma combine with sugars in the wine to form odorless glycosides. Through the process of hydrolysis, caused by enzymes or acids in the wine, they revert into an aromatic form. The act of tasting wine is essentially the act of smelling these vaporized aroma compounds. What we have done is found a way to duplicate the hydrolytic process that releases these aromas with tuned heat and vibration in a volatizing chamber.”

While the concept is simple, the results are anything but.

“Olfactory receptors cells, Dr. Credulous continues, “Each sensitive to a different aroma, pick up these compounds and transfer the information to the brain by way of the olfactory bulb. In the 1980s there was renewed focus in studying the correlation between aroma/flavor compounds in grapes and the resulting quality of wine. Scientists were able to use chromatograph-mass spectrometers to identify volatile aroma compounds in various grape varieties. It was our research into the action of the gas chromatograph chamber action that lead to the discovery of induced hyrdrolysis.”

WineCano
Hydrolysis Chamber not shown for security reasons.

The Beverage Vaporiser works like this: the wine to be sampled is loaded into the Volcano and is put through the patented Chromatographic Hydrolysis Chamber. There, through a tuned system of temperature, resonance frequencies and aetheric distribution algorithms, the wine is turned into a richly textured, intensely flavourful vapour. Inhaled gently, this vapour reveals every aromatic compound and every bit of the bouquet and nuance of your wine. According to Credulous, that’s the key to identifying wine like a pro.

“By extracting and concentrating all of the aromas of wine in a small volume, they’re more pronounced. Anyone who has ever struggled to identify a particular character in a wine will be able to instantly smell blackberry in a Cabernet, or cat urine in a Sauvignon Blanc! Using pre-set algorithms in the Volcano, wines will release aromatic profiles identical to famous wines and vintages, from ’47 Mouton to 2001 Screaming Eagle. Training your palate has never been easier!”

And there’s more. According the Director of Customer Experience William Nelson,

“Because we tune the precise type and quantity of volatiles that are released, we ensure that only the finest, richest aromas come out. We can make an inexpensive or very young wine release the same aromatic character of a first-growth or Premier Cru wine that’s been aged for years, even decades.”

William Nelson
Director of Customer Experience, William Nelson (above) demonstrates prototype portable beverage vaporiser at the Montana Cattlemen’s Wine and Steer Show.

“But that’s only the beginning: because ethanol is a volatile compound we can suppress the hydrolisation frequency of alcohol in the machine–the vapour is as delicious as wine, but won’t lead to intoxication or drunkenness! The whole point of wine appreciation is to identify the character of a wine, to appreciate it for itself. By eliminating the effects of alcohol on the nervous system we can extend that pleasure indefinitely, and consumers can use as much wine as they want, without introducing toxins into their body or straining their liver.”

vapour head
Ease up off that Cotes du Rhone, chum!

Of course, consumers can set the machine to deliver ethanol if they wish, by selecting the correct menu item on the touchscreen and agreeing to the End User License Agreement.

While there are plans for several types of vaporisers, including the portable prototype shown above, the Volcano is the first wine ‘Vape’ being launched and is highly suggested by dragonvape.ca. The Volcano Classic quality is first rate, and the build quality is incredibly durable: it’s made by a German company, Snortzen-Pickel, who offer a 3 year warranty standard on every purchase. Both the aromatic tuning and chamber size are adjustable to suit your needs–it can vaporise up to three litres of wine at one time, allowing you to serve two dozen guests easily.

Ann Credulous
Dr. Credulous in front of the first Beverage Vaporiser prototype.

The Beverage Vaporiser Volcano will be available in late September, timed to use in conjunction with the 2015 harvest. “We’re extremely proud of this product,” Says Ann Credulous, “Drinking wine is now a thing of the past–and rather than just sniffing a vintage like cavemen, we can literally inhale every drop!”

It’s a brave new world for wine!

Happy Yule!

That's one festive goat!
That’s one festive goat!

The wheel of the year rolls on, and it’s hjól. Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah or other midwinter and religious festivals may the season bring you blessings and the new year challenges and joys.

I’m off to a family dinner tomorrow, which should be crazy with the fun. I’m looking forward to a big helping of turkey.

Well, it's stuffed, I guess.
Well, it’s stuffed, I guess.

My personal celebration involves a quiet 24th with a nice meal and the ritual viewing of Scrooge (the Alastair Sim version is the only one worth watching) and a wee nip of Tim’s special recipe egg-nog.

Stay safe, stay warm, and remember to hold your loved ones close, and a happy yuletide to you.

Yet Again, Powdered Alcohol.

This is really the non-story that would not die.

You may recall from such blog posts as Powdered Alcohol: Some Dry Observations and Further Observations on Powdered Booze, the faux product Palcohol made some headlines. People who did not understand organic chemistry were delighted by the idea that there was a magic powder that you could sprinkle into anything and make it an instant alcoholic beverage, and the ‘will nobody think of the children’ crowd went absolutely insane at the idea that kids would be snorting it at parties, and next thing you know they’d be addicted to the marijuana . . .

People. I’ll never understand them. Even being one does not seem to help.

However, the chaps over at Vice Magazine (warning: the magazine and the website are relentlessly naughty) have an occasional practical bent. One of their intrepid reporters obtained the necessary ingredients and with a few modifications (he used 192 Proof grain alcohol) he made a batch.

How was it? Two quotes sum it all up:

The powder drunk creeps up on you, and sometime on the walk it kicked in. I went from mostly sober to buzzed to the kind of drunk where you already have a headache and can feel the hangover coming like a distant high-pitched whine. 

The headache was still present—a throbbing pressure at my temples—but the powder drunk was giving me a weird, out-of-body feeling. If you like headaches and gummed-up sinuses and numb, dissociative (sic) drunks, you’re going to go apeshit for powdered booze.

boozefire
Photo courtesy Vice Magazine

There you have it. The author notes that the stuff burned like Napalm, which may in fact be the killer application for the product–burning up in a fire.

 

New Product Announcement

Dateline: April 1, 2014

Tim Vandergrift Worldwide Product Development Laboratories

FOR IMMEDIATE DISSEMINATION

TVR (Tim Vandergrift Research–a division of TVCC Worldwide) is excited to announce a completely new product category for consumer wine and beer makers! For thousands of years, people from every walk of life have taken pride and pleasure from fermenting their own wine, beer, mead, sake, etc., not only because of the delicious beverages that result, but also from the sense of accomplishment and purpose that making things with your own hand can bring.

However, while consumers freely share their wine and beer with family and friends, there has always been one member of the family that has been left out: the cat.

I can haz cheeze and wine?
Hey, who’s shoe do I have to soil to get a drink around here?

Around the world, over 90 million domestic cats are kept as pets, and in North America one-third of all households have at least one cat. While we lavish our feline companions with soft beds, dangly toys, good quality food and treats, they have never been able to participate in our rituals of wine consumption—until now.

Cat-kit

After nearly a decade of research, TVR has produced the first home winemaking kit exclusively for cat owners, Nepeta Cellars ‘Le Chat Mechant’. Available in an easy-to-use format, it allows users to produce 4 litres (one gallon) of an invigorating, stimulating beverage that your cat will find irresistible.

catnip
Fragrant and lush, drives cats mad

The base is made from first quality Nepeta Cataria, grown by artisanal farmers in British Columbia. With extremely high levels of cyclopentanoid monoterpenes (the active molecules in catnip) this provides the kick cats desire and crave.

“Cat ‘wine’ cannot be based on alcohol”, says Dr. Stanley Owsley, head researcher. “Even relatively small amounts of alcohol are dangerous to cats. That’s where the specially developed ‘stutter-step’ yeast comes in.”

Yeast beast not least
G.O.O.F.Y, engineered to not make alcohol

“Genetically Obviated Ortho-Flocculant Yeast­TM, also known as ‘stutter-step’ will ferment the sugars in the base, extracting the active ingredients in the catnip.” Dr. Owsley notes. “ However, as soon as it reaches 1% alcohol, the yeast re-absorbs and breaks down the alcohol, then starts over. In this way the active ingredients are extracted, slowly and smoothly, without any permanent production of alcohol that could harm feline neurological systems.”

gross-carboy
Rich, green and fragrant, with aromas of mint, heather and tuna

In addition catnip and the necessary sugars in the base, flavours include tuna, rodent, chicken and turkey with giblets, for the savoury tastes that cats crave.

Nep-vineyards

And crave it they will! Not only are cats are delighted with the flavour, they go bonkers for the effects. According to Feline Attractant, cis,trans-Nepetalactone: Metabolism in the Domestic Cat (Waller, Price and Mitchell 1969), behaviors include sniffing, scratching, rolling, increased motor activity, running, vocalisations, terrorising other pets and spaced-out drooling.

Happy Cat
Side effects include agitation, sleepiness, and potential psychotic episodes

And not only is Le Chien Mechant completely safe (Behavioral and toxicological studies of cyclopentanoid monoterpenes from Nepeta cataria. Harney, Barofsky and Leary, 1978) it’s non-addictive and improves cardiac function and blood pressure in exposed cats.

A pretentious little red, but amusing
Red with fish, White with fish.

If you love making your own wine and beer, and love your cat, you’ll love making Le Chat Mechant for them! Available April 1st at all good home wine and beer retailers.