Wine attraction pays off

Huntington Beach’s Patrick Farrell considered his interest in the world of wine a serious pastime until health issues forced him to think about it as a second career.

The former ophthalmologist may soon be better known for inventing a $30 gizmo that has a perceptible smoothening effect on red wine.

Farrell decided to take the seven-part, four-and-a-half day test to become a Master of Wine after he dislocated some discs in his neck vertebrae and couldn’t continue practicing as a doctor.

Farrell is one of only 25 Master of Wines in the United States and among 250 such connoisseurs in the world. The wine test includes blind tasting to figure out the origins of a wine.

Farrell’s interest in wine and wine-making had him eyeing a course in Enology, the study of wine, at UC Davis as a back-up if his medical career fell through. The well-developed passion came in handy when friends at a swimming and racquet club he frequented approached him.

Farrell’s friends had been testing the efficacy of using magnets inside water mains to prolong the life of the pipes. The magnets attracted salts, instead of corroding and damaging the metal pipes. The club acquaintances, aware of Farrell’s wine credentials, asked him to test the technique on wine in the late 1990s.

Although skeptical of the idea, Farrell eventually agreed to try the magnetic procedure on a bottle of red wine from Bordeaux, France.

Farrell discovered the French red, which has a pronounced harsh taste due to tannins, was considerably softer after being poured through the magnetic pourer.

That experiment was one of many that Farrell conducted on various beverages. He found that allowing oxygen to mingle with wine allowed it to become silkier without destroying any of its flavors or fragrance.

Farrell demonstrated its effect on different wines at his handsome Tudor home on Crest Avenue, gargling and spitting out mouthfuls of the spirits.

The pourer went through several prototypes and patent research before he decided it was ready to be marketed.

Farrell and his business partners, Tom Thompson from Long Beach and Mac Lindsey of Westminster, invested thousands of dollars in researching the BevWizard and fine-tuning the pourer. The company, Inventive Technologies Inc., is based in Westminster with Farrell as its president.

Mac Lindsey, Farrell’s business partner, remembers using the magnetic technique on car engines three years ago.

“We applied that technique serendipitously to a wine bottle, and sure enough it worked,” Lindsey said.

Now he’s delighted that people are catching on, especially restaurants that serve wine by the glass.

“I tried it on a Two Buck Chuck and found it tasted like a Six Buck Chuck,” Farrell said, referring to an iconic wine sold by Trader Joe’s markets.

The BevWizard’s powerful magnets changes the structure of tannins in a wine, making it rounder and softer while diminishing the bitter aftertaste of tannins.

Farrell found the gizmo worked better with young red wines or French wines that had been heavily “oaked” or aged in oak barrels.

Some wine purists protest that using the pourer would encourage people to open a wine bottle instead of waiting for it to age in the cellar.

“About 90% of people open a bottle of wine within three days of purchasing it,” Farrell said.

His partner Thompson agreed.

“It’s a nice little inexpensive product that anyone can afford and which will make the wines an average guy drinks better,” he said.

The BevWizard would be a perfect accompaniment, allowing guests to have a choice, Farrell thinks.

Sales of the wine pourer have already taken off, with 500 orders from their website and 1,000 BevWizards sold from stores they had supplied.

What Farrell would like to see in the future, though, is at least five BevWizards in every household, with special editions and gift versions of the pourer.

The company is eyeing the global market, especially Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan.

BevWizard has no discernible effect on the Japanese liquor sake, but gift-giving is a popular tradition in Korean and Japanese societies ? perfect for selling BevWizards, Farrell said.

He also plans to introduce it to the Huntington Beach High School Parents and Teachers Assn. and donate proceeds of its sales to the school district.

Word of mouth is the best way to make sure the cash register is always ringing, Farrell said.

And he doesn’t plant to stop at wine pourers. If you see an option at your local Starbucks for a less bitter coffee, you now know whom to thank. hbi.29-farrell-CPhotoInfoDT1SDIGD20060629j1jp48ncDON LEACH / INDEPENDENT(LA)Wine master and retired physician Patrick Farrell pours through the device he invented that removes the bitter tannins in wine but does not change the taste.