They transfix us until we bring ourselves back to reality and settle for an affordable Trader Joe`s or Whole Foods wine. A San Francisco winery, however, believes we don`t have to sacrifice our wallets or palettes for expensive taste.

Ava Winery founders Mardonn Chua and Alex Lee claim they can `turn water into wine` in just 15 minutes, without using grapes. The duo, motivated by a display of Chateau Montelena on a wine tour, wanted to see if they could hack the wine. Traditionally, winemakers ferment grape juice by allowing yeast to turn its sugars into ethanol, then they let the wine age.

On Medium, however, Chua described his first attempt at making wine without the grapes. He used ingredients like tartaric acid, malic acid, tannin powder, sucrose, and ethanol in the form of Everclear. To improve mouthfeel, he used vegetable glycerin. Chua’s initial batch included flavor compounds like limonene, which has a citrusy aroma, and pineapple-scented ethyl hexanoate. After spending a weekend testing different concoctions, he arrived at his best one yet — though he admitted it wasn’t `a good wine yet, but it was acceptable enough to drink.`

After this attempt, Chua and his team used specialized techniques to analyze the chemical compositions of different wines, including Chardonnay, champagne, and Pinot Noir. These techniques, which included gas chromatography mass spectrometry, identified the amounts of amino acids, sugars, and flavor and odor compounds found within each drink, and allowed Chua to include them in his synthetic wine. Once he was satisfied with the proportions of these chemicals, he had the winery’s sommelier test his drink.

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