Can we replicate the chemical profiles of famously expensive drinks? And would people drink them?
If you’ve read the helpful signage in any store that makes its profits from selling wine, you will have encountered rhapsodies in prose about ‘warm oak notes’, ‘structured tannins’ and improbable firework bursts of fruit, as well as references to leather, floral arrangements and various components of the spice cabinet.
What is in these bottles is water and ethanol, in various proportions, along with a variety of trace substances in low concentrations. Those are crucial, and there are a lot of them, but their number is finite and they can presumably be analysed, identified, and their concentrations determined. If one does that, assembles all those components, and mixes them together in the same proportions, does one not have an identical solution to the one obtainable at the liquor store?