Surplus or waste wine and poor-quality wine made from sour grapes can all be turned into efficient and eco-friendly disinfectants, says a research team working at Oregon State University (WO 2004/50819).
The trick is to lace the junk wine with common salt and sulphur dioxide. In tests the patented mix was much better at killing food-borne bacteria on kitchen surfaces than conventional disinfectants containing ammonia or hypochlorite. The team says this is because bacteria have become resistant to the chemicals in conventional disinfectant.
