Wine improved with Tartini's music
Music is known to have beneficial effects on living organisms and a project in which a red wine was fermented and matured to the music of Piran-born composer Giuseppe Tartini has proved just that.
Tartini 330 - Sound Experience by Sara is a multi-year project involving the Koper-based winery Vinakoper, engineer Sara Pfeifer Milčinović and the Piran Coastal Galleries.
The engineer first became interested in the effect of sound on yeast cells several years ago while studying acoustics and psychoacoustics at the Ljubljana Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Pfeifer Milčinović, who at the time held the title of the Slovenian Istria Wine Queen, conducted the first experiments herself, before being joined by Boštjan Zidar, the chief oenologist at Vinakoper.
Engineer Sara Pfeifer Milčinović and chief oenologist at Vinakoper Boštjan Zidar with bottles of the refosco infused with Tartini music. Photo: Bojan Kralj/STA
The music picked for the experiment was Tartini's Sonata in D Major or Re maggiore, which Pfeifer Milčinović says was the obvious choice, considering that the wine used was the refosco variety.
The refosco or refošk in Slovenian "is known as the king of reds. Tartini too named his sonata Re (Italian for king), so there was no dilemma really," the mastermind behind the project told reporters at the presentation in Koper on 10 April.
The experiment involved three samples. The first was not exposed to sound during production process, while a vibrational speaker was placed on the container with the second sample. In the third case, a speaker was placed inside the steel container with the sample playing Re maggiore throughout the process.
The matured wine samples were then sent to the National Institute of Chemistry and several other wine laboratories. The tests confirmed differences, including in density and alcohol content.
The wine produced with the speaker inside the container had the best values, Pfeifer Milčinović said. The same sample also scored best in a wine tasting organised after the lab tests.
"The wine produced to the music is more supple and smoother, the acids are more subdued, it has a fuller body, it is fruitier and has more structure," oenologist Zidar described the final product.
Vinakoper produced two barrels of the Re maggiore musical wine. The bottles carrying the label will be mostly used as protocol gifts by the Piran municipality, which backed the project financially.
