Clef du Vin – the key to adding years to wine?

I recently had a chance to try out what seems to be latest gadget designed to add years to a wine's development in seconds.


The Clef du Vin is a little bit of metal which, if immersed in a wine for x seconds, is supposed to make the wine taste x years older. Nowhere on the user guide in five languages which comes with the gadget is there any explanation of the theory behind this, but from what I can make out from www.clef-du-vin.com the idea is that this special, unspecified alloy has been designed, by a team of Frenchmen...