geekosystem

An astonishingly well-preserved Roman shipwreck has been discovered just 18 miles off the coast of Italy, and like any decent cruise ship, it comes equipped with its own buffet. Researchers and divers have recovered several vessels that contained foodstuffs like grain, wine, and pickled fish. Because the ship has been so immaculately kept, researchers believe the wreck, which was found using a remote-operated vehicle, also contains intact amphorae. These Iron Age Tupperware containers have proven surprisingly durable in similar wrecks, leaving the dive team hopeful that containers pulled from the wreck will still house all the refreshment one needs for a well-rounded 2-millennia-old meal that would probably kill you.

Basing their decision on studies showing that happy animals produce meat that has a better taste, Languedoc-Roussillon winemaker Jean-Charles Tastavy partnered with farmer Claude Chaballier to experiment. Originally, they fed the cows the remainders of pressed grapes combined with water but have since moved on to straight up giving them wine. Somewhat impressively, each cow imbibes up to two bottles per day.

You probably wouldn't imagine that many wine connoisseurs are particularly interested in Transformer-style mech robots, but for the one or two out there who are, a very unique and uniquely awesome wine rack is on the market. As much art installation as wine rack, the WineMech stands six feet tall and is a one-of-a-kind and custom-welded out of a massive collection of used transmission parts from a veritable army of automobiles. Each piece has been meticulously cleaned to insure the removal of all corrosive meaterials, painted gunmetal grey, and clear-coated. In addition to being able to hold approximately 32 bottles of wine, this bad boy is also out-fitted with a bunch of LEDs because why not?

They say a fine wine gets better with age. If so, it'll probably also get better if you just throw a 4.5 billion year old meteorite in there as well, right? That might be up for debate, but that hasn't stopped Ian Hutcheon from doing exactly that to produce his space-tastic wine Meteorito: "The wine that's made with a really old rock in it." I'm not sure that's the official Meteorito tagline, but it might as well be.

In what seems to be a slap in the face towards fossil fuels, the Exige 270E Tri-fuel sports car runs on three things: chocolate, cheese, and wine. As catchy as that is, it's actually a somewhat deceptive marketing ploy. This sexy looking car designed by Lotus Engineering actually runs on ethanol, technically, but it derives that ethanol from the aforementioned products and can use that ethanol to go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds.

So it runs on chocolate, cheese, and wine in the same way that your normal car runs on dead dinosaurs. Still, it makes for an interesting angle on ethanol and the myriad ways to produce it that don't involve, you know, boring into the earth and robbing her of both her innocence and natural beauty. In regard to these three products, ethanol is typically made from whey, from the cheese-making process; surplus chocolate (as if); and low-grade wine. Still, I prefer to use those things to fuel my body, but maybe that's just me.

When Pennsylvania introduced by-the-bottle wine vending machines, it caused quite a stir in the States, but as ever in matters oenological, France is far ahead of us: Some French supermarkets have gas station-like wine pumps. You bring a jug, water bottle, or what have you to the store and fill it up with red, white, or rosé, print out a receipt, and then pay prices as low as $2 a liter, or roughly $8 a gallon, for your bounty. Considering that the standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters (for the metric illiterate, that's three-quarters of a liter), you get a lot of bang for your Euro. And did we mention it's environmentally friendly?