Imitation game

Would you buy a synthetic coffee concocted in a lab? What if it was significantly cheaper and more environmentally friendly? David Burrows dons his white coat to see what the future may bring.

Would you drink wine made not from grapes but a bunch of flavour compounds created in a laboratory? How about if it promised to be identical to a classic vintage at a fraction of the cost? What if it was better for the environment, or for you? Connoisseurs may scoff, but Alec Lee claims his batch of synthetic wines is just the start of things to come. “Wine is technologically a low-hanging fruit,” he says. “We’ll be able to rapidly bring products to market that not only match but surpass the quality of their natural counterparts.”

Taste tests carried out on the Moscato d’Asti mimic Lee’s team has produced suggest there’s a long way to go, but that doesn’t stop him dreaming about the possibilities – many of which could lie beyond wine. “I see a future where any food we want is available at the touch of a button,” he says. Food would be cheap, plentiful and sustainable.

MOLECULAR PUZZLE

Such claims should always be taken with a pinch of salt (Lee is a man who insists he can turn water into wine in 15 minutes). Still, it makes you think: if it’s possible to recreate wine in the lab, could the same be done with coffee?

“I haven’t looked at its molecular profile to get a really good sense of it, [but] I do think that’s a possibility,” says Lee. Texture and caffeine would be the most straightforward bits, while flavour and aroma would be the most difficult, he assumes. Others agree it’s possible, but that doesn’t mean synthetic coffee would be easy, cheap or acceptable.