Can making your wine listen to music improve its flavour?

It's the latest bonkers trend to come out of the viticulture industry - and although, yes, it's almost certainly nonsense, it's no stranger than a lot of ideas kicking around in the wine world
What would happen if you took a bottle of wine out of the cupboard and, before drinking it, made it "listen" to your iPod for a couple of days?A bodega in Murcia, Southern Spain, has decided to find out. The tasting notes for Barahonda's "59h 35m 3s" report that it's made from Monastrell, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It spent 10 months being aged in American and French oak. And, after bottling, it was played a selection of music for 59 hours, 35 minutes and three seconds."The project came out of the idea that when a pregnant mother listens to music it influences the character of the baby," explains Sonia Garcia of Barahonda. "Therefore we decided to play music to the wine when it was in the bottle to soften and sweeten the tannins." Whatever you might think about the, erm, "science" behind this, the tunes chosen by Lara López, director of Spain's national alternative music station, Radio 3, seem to have done the trick. The wine's very nice, with tannins that have clearly been caressed into a silky smoothness by her well-chosen mix of Fatoumata Diawar's Mali-folk and Sigur Ros's stirring Icelandic pastorals, among other hip choices.Does Barahonda really believe that the wine would have turned out differently if they'd played Slayer and Sir Mixalot instead? Surely not. It's just a fun bit of marketing, along the lines of that wine that came out in perfume bottles last year, isn't it? Probably. But nobody should underestimate the ability of winemakers to believe the most extraordinary things when it suits them. Just look at the success of Biodynamics.The biodynamic agriculture system, invented by philosopher Rudolph Steiner in 1924, has made major inroads into viniculture in the last 20 years, and it's still growing. In 2004 there was an article in Fortune magazine detailing some of the prestigious wineries that were fans, including Domaine Leroy in Burgundy and Château de la Roche-aux-Moines in the Loire. In May last year the UK got its first, officially certified biodynamic vineyard, Sedlescombe in East Sussex.At the end of last year wine critic Jancis Robinson reported that, according to a study written by organic wine expert Matthew Waldin, "5-7% of the world's vines are now organic or are in conversion to organic viticulture, and of them as many as 30% could be subject to some form of biodynamic techniques". This might not sound much to those who know of Biodynamics as, essentially, organic farming with some new-age frills. But, to be officially accredited as biodynamic by the main regulatory body Demeter, it's not enough to vaguely follow the movement's broad principles of treating the vineyard as an organic whole. You also have to treat the soil of the vineyard with a series of nine bizarre preparations, some of which sound like something you'd hear being read out by the prosecution at a medieval witch trial.One, for example, involves burying a cow's horn full of manure, leaving it all winter, then digging it up, heavily diluting the sludge inside and "dynamising" the resulting mixture, (stirring it in a special way, homeopathy-style) before spraying it around the vineyard. This has to be done according to a strict time-table based on the movements of the moon and the planets.As strange as this all sounds it's difficult to argue with the success of the biodynamic producers. Many respected critics, including Robinson and The Guardian's David Williams, are fans of wines made using these techniques. Indeed the critics are often inadvertent participants in the biodynamics movement, as many producers and even supermarkets organise tastings based on a lunar calendar invented by Maria Thun, a follower of Steiner. Adherents believe that wine tastes best if you drink it on what's known as a "fruit day", when the Moon is passing through the constellations of Aires, Leo and Sagittarius.Is any of this more rational than playing your cellar the first Nick Drake album on repeat? Perhaps they're both just signs that the producer in question is applying an extraordinary level of detail to the production of their wine, leaving absolutely nothing to chance. Unfortunately most of us, after buying a bottle, are unlikely to check what's going on with the moon before drinking it. We can, however, make sure that we only drink wine in bars where the music playing is impeccable. Who knows what effect an unfortunate blast of Black Eyed Peas, Robin Thicke or any other uncool choices might have on those delicate tannins?Can music really improve wine? Photograph: Alamy