Dehydrated Red Wine
Without revealing my sources… lets just say I had some dehydrated wine appear at my home one day last week. Sold in Europe and not FDA-approved in the USA this may be tricky to obtain – but – is it worth the effort?
Lets do the taste-test…
First the goods – comes nicely packaged in a foil pouch. Weighing in a 2.1 oz – considerably less than your average 1 liter bottle, it’s looking good so far…
Emptying the powder into a bowl, it has a distinctive musty smell – kind of like old cork. Can’t be bad, right? Perhaps it’s a vintage year?
The directions call for mixing with 6 oz of cold water, and letting stand for 5 minutes.
I was rather hoping it would make more than this… but I’m still hopeful… maybe the powder/liquid ratio helps the alcohol content, and the taste will be more divine this way…
After about 6-7 minutes of stirring – trying to get the powder to dissolve and get rid of the lumps, I finally give up and reach for the strainer.
Strained into a wine glass, the wine now has a delightful white scum layer floating on top… ok… I’m starting to get nervous…
I try and overlook the rotting beetroot smell as I bring the glass to my lips for the taste test… mind over matter, I really really want this to work out. It’s dehydrated wine for heavens sake – cut it some slack.
“A nice fruity bouquet, wonderful legs, earthy structure, revealing layers of ripe berries, currants and vanilla oak.”
These aren’t the words I would use. I tried really hard – but the following is the BEST I could come up with.
“Clumpy, musty odor, like drinking beetroot juice spiked with cheap vodka that has spoiled at the bottom of the ocean for three hundred years. “
Needless to say… this sucker won’t be going in my pack on a trip anytime soon.
I wonder if I can sell the other two packets on ebay to recover my losses…
11 Responses to “Dehydrated Red Wine”
September 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Lol…..best description ever of wine
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 am
Think I’ll stick with the whisky!
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
You should try the white wine version, it’s like fizzy dandruff!
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
i can’t say that i’ve ever tasted dandruff to spot the linkage, but the idea of dandruff pop-rocks really doesn’t sound too appealing. i’ll pass
December 26th, 2008 at 12:47 am
[...] may be at hand to make Brett’s Dehyrated Wine drinkable. Per a recent posting in the New Scientist, wine can be aged by passing lots of [...]
December 26th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Dude, help may be at hand – see [Hope for Brett's Wine Collection] http://dooger.org/?p=120
January 29th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
[...] there is indeed hope for the wine drinking hiker after all. After Brett’s review of dehydrated wine: “Clumpy, musty odor, like drinking beetroot juice spiked with cheap vodka that has spoiled at [...]
March 27th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
In the day of Prohibition it was common practice to buy wine this way and of course when you got home .. you had wine! not so new… I understand the wine bricks were not so light …
May 7th, 2009 at 10:59 am
love the description. thanks for guinea-pigging this one. ugh.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Hey Brett, I might be interested in buying one of those from you! I have a “How low can you go” wine tasting coming up. I saw an email for this some time ago and have been trying to find some.
October 6th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Haha, great review.
Not sure we’ll be stocking this anytime soon.