General

Virtually every flight I take finds me perusing the SkyMall catalog as a form of entertainment.  Some of the items for sale are amusing; others are downright useless.  It is rare, however, that I encounter a product for sale through the catalog that is, Prima facia, fraudulent.  That's what happened, though, on my recent return from New York.  Page 242 of the SkyMall catalog advertises a "Wine and Liquor Accelerator" that claims to "Accelerate the slow aging flavor of wines and liquors". How?  It "surrounds the beverage with a powerful triangular-shaped magnetic field".

Really?  Exposure to a magnet is all you need to age a bottle or glass of wine?  I'm sorry, but that simply isn't factual.  For those wines that do benefit from aging, the aging process cannot be "accelerated" through exposure to the sort of weak magnetic field possible in the device being sold by SkyMall.  It's really that simple.  The chemical process which occurs as certain wines age is not influenced by a couple small, permanent magnets.  SkyMall should be ashamed.