Innovation That Matters

Water-to-wine device revealed to be a hoax

Food & Drink

The Miracle Machine, previously reported by Springwise, has been revealed to be a publicity stunt devised by nonprofit Wine to Water in order to raise awareness about the lack of drinkable water in some corners of the world.

Regular readers of Springwise may have recently seen our coverage of The Miracle Machine — a household device that promised to create wine from water and a few sachets of ingredients. Sound too good to be true? The idea has now been revealed to be a publicity stunt devised by nonprofit Wine to Water in order to raise awareness about the lack of drinkable water in some corners of the world.

The charity has unveiled the true details of the campaign in a press release. Kevin James, one of the ‘founders’ of The Miracle Machine, disclosed: “In just under two weeks, the Miracle Machine went viral with over 500 million media impressions as more than 200,000 people watched the Miracle Machine video, nearly 600 media outlets around the world covered the story, 6,000 people tweeted about it, and 7,000 people signed up for a potential crowd-funding platform to invest in the faux machine.”

The video below also explains more about the real story behind the fictitious device:

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While making wine at home is an entirely possible proposition, the level of convenience offered by The Miracle Machine isn’t unfortunately going to hit markets any time soon. Unless perhaps there are some budding entrepreneurs who might be inspired by this publicity stunt to make such a device a reality…?