So perhaps the great leap wasn’t in using red wine.  Instead it was in replacing the known hot water/ethanol step with other hot ethanol mixtures already handy in the lab.   I’m betting Saki.

Also, conductivity isn’t hard to grasp once the usual misconceptions are cleaned up.  “Conductor” is correctly defined as “medium which contains mobile charges.”  Any electrically charged object is a conductor, as long as it’s free to move around.  A pile of charged styrofoam peanuts is a conductor, since an applied voltage will make the peanuts leap through the air (and, motion of charged styrofoam is called electric current.)   The quantum weirdness only appears when we start talking about *metal* conduction, as opposed to non-electron conductors such as salt water, charged raindrops, etc.

I will be some kind of super hero by drinking copious amounts of red wine

Indeed… This is what happens to me when I drink a good amount of wine…  the electricity flows through and alongside me…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcHKOC64KnE

Here is the paper Alcoholic beverages induce superconductivity in FeTe1 – xSx where they announced the discovery. In it they call it “amazing” but give no hint about why someone chanced to change the necessary water treatment to booze treatment.

Maybe they were inspired by what I vaguely recall of the famous “tomato sandwich incident” where someone who grew frustrated that a chemical reaction only worked some of the time threw a tomato sandwich into it and found that that caused it to work every time.

Noted, and thank you!