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Posts Tagged ‘wine science’

One Grape Turns Into A White Wine And A Red Wine And Suddenly They Have Nothing In Common

Posted in Cabernet Franc, Education, Fun Facts, Research, tagged , , , , , on January 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Have you ever wondered why white wines and red wines seem to have completely different aromatic descriptions?  White wines are all about citrus and tropical fruits and maybe hints of butter and vanilla and red wines focus on red and black fruits with maybe earthy things like leather, tobacco, oak, and just straight up meat.  But what do they have in common?  I mean, regardless of whether it’s a red grape or a white grape, it’s still a grape, right?

If you rely on the aroma descriptors that you get from the back of the bottle, or a “wine expert” (like me!), or even the winemaker themselves, you will rarely find any that overlap in the Venn-Diagram-Of-Red-And-White-Wine-Aroma-Descriptors…pretty sure that’s a thing…it’s not a thing on the internet, so let’s make it:

WineAromaVenn

…so no overlapping there…NOT. A. SIN. GLE. ONE.

(all of these flavor descriptors were taken from Wine Enthusiast articles and a little Editor’s note here, I took out “Watermelon” as a descriptor for Merlot because only WE lists watermelon as a descriptor for Merlot). 

Why is this? Why do we not describe red wines and white wines as having any overlapping characteristics?…I’ll hold you in suspense a little longer.  Perhaps a more peculiar case first:

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What inspired this investigation was drinking the Blanc de Cabernet Franc from Leah Jorgensen Cellars.  This is a white wine made from the Cabernet Franc grape which is usually made into a red wine.  She also makes the red version and yes, they are both fantastic.  But what piqued my curiosity was how each wine was being marketed.  This is the same grape, from approximately the same location (She buys her grapes from a few different vineyards it looks like, so it’s tough to say the exact grapes used for the red version came from the same place that the white version grapes came from), made by the same winemaker; the only apparent difference is that in one version, the skins of the grapes were left on, and the other, they were left off*.  Yet, here are how the two wines are described:

White – The world’s original white Cabernet Franc – this medium-bodied wine typically has delicate nuances of “early blush” apricot, golden raspberries, Meyer lemon, blood orange, white tea leaf, tarragon, and hazelnut – making up a pretty, complex white wine from red grapes. This vintage, the wine also offers subtle botanical notes of elderflower, jasmine, lime blossom, sweet pea shoot, even a hint of ground cinnamon, with flavors of clementine, lemon meringue, light honey leading into a creamy and nutty mid-palate that finishes with refreshing salinity. Drink now for freshness, but this wine will age in the bottle for a minimum of five years, due to the phenolic content from the red skins. Pair with white fish or shellfish, especially oysters and scallops; pasta with simple cream sauce; pork chops with apple compote; roasted chicken; crab stuffed poblano peppers with cream sauce; polenta and beans; a young, creamy, nutty Gruyère.

Red – This wine expresses fresh, bright, vibrant aromatics lifting and floating above the glass, brimming with intense floral notes, perfume, and sweet fruit. This wine was like a bouquet of flowers saved from a precious occasion, hung carefully upside to dry and preserve the natural oils – rose petals, hibiscus, violets, carnations. It reminded me of a delicate floral fragrance I wore when I was a young woman – “Petite Cherie” by Annick Goutal – not for the individual scents of pear, peach, musky rose, freshly cut grass, and vanilla (those descriptors really sound more like a portrait of white wine, anyway), but, for the sum of its parts, the alchemy of these scents that, when coalesced, create something that smells nothing like the individual oils, but, something of a magical emanation created by some ethereal woodland fairy queen. Then, another swirl of the glass sparked cinnamon bark, cigar, sweet birch bark, the distinctive spicy-citrus aroma of black walnut leaves, brambles, and ripe cherries.

Notice in the description of the red wine it’s even mentioned that some characteristics seem like they should be describing a white wine…just not the white wine made from the same grapes by the same wine maker.  Since a good portion of wine aromatics are determined by the grapes themselves, it would stand to reason that these two wines should at least have something in common aromatically speaking, shouldn’t they?

Now let’s look at the reasons as to why there appear to be zero similarities between how red and white wines smell and taste.  I would contend that most of this disparity is a result of how we interpret the aromas coming out of the wine we are drinking and less to do with actual chemical differences between red and white wines.  In the world of research, this very much appears to be a undecided question, but here is my reasoning:

  1. Our sense of smell is influenced by a whole host of things that aren’t just aroma molecules hitting our smell receptors: memory/training, mood, and the remaining 4 senses, with emphasis on sight.  When we see a food of a certain color our brains, in an effort to be as efficient as possible put all of the memories of similarly colored foods in the fronts of our minds to compare the current item with.  You could call it laziness, but we seem to stop with whatever the brain serves up first instead of consciously digging deeper.
  2. Aromatic descriptions used in wine, beer, whiskey, tea, coffee, etc. are developed for the primary purpose of comparing and contrasting when having a live discussion.  However, we already have categorized a wine into whether it is red, white, or rose before we get to smelling it so if someone goes about comparing and contrasting wines in different color categories, there’s already an assumption that everything will be different.  Aromatic descriptions are actually not a great way to categorize wine from a global perspective.
  3. Aromas, chemically speaking, can either be fairly simple (butter = diacytel) or complex (coriander = pinene, 3,7-dimethylocta-2,6-dienal [citral], linalool, and camphor)…and even with the “simple” aromas, it really is a mix of chemicals that exist, but one just tends to dominate.  Then, to make this even more complicated, there is an incredibly wide range as to the potency of these aromatic compounds.  Just looking at the variants of methoxy-pyrazines, which are responsible for those vegetal aromas, our noses can detect them at 0.000002 ppm in water or white wines or 0.00001 ppm in red wine.  In normal speak, these are tiny, tiny amounts; fractions of a drop. For diacytel, the detection threshold can range from 0.2 ppm in white wines to 2.8 ppm in red wines.  This means that you need 100,000+ times the amount of diacytel to be present than a methoxy-pyrazine in order for us to smell it!  Not only does these threshold levels vary between white and red wines, but they can also vary between white wines and between red wines.  These variations are the best evidence to say that there actually could be distinct and disjointed aromatic differences between white and red wines, BUT (and I like big ‘buts’ (I cannot lie)) the thresholds appear to work on a spectrum, meaning there is bound to be some overlap somewhere.  The research on this topic is nowhere near where it needs to be to make any definitive statements.

 

Therefore, the next time you are sitting around intellectually comparing and contrasting a curated selection of wines (Pretty much a Tuesday, right?), try stretching your mind a little and asking yourself what a white wine and red wine could have in common.  For example, take a food like fennel or the spice anise and see which white wines it brings out those attributes in and which red wines it brings out those attributes in.  I don’t say this lightly, but you may just blow your own mind.

 

 

*Chances are different yeasts were used and some oak in the red, but the wines were most likely fermented in the same tanks, at similar times, with the same bacteria roaming around, by the same hands.  Additionally, it looks like the the white wine also underwent a bit of Malolactic Fermentation (which most reds go through), so the differences between how the two wines were made are slight.

 

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Please Stop Saying Wine Will Make You Healthy

Posted in Education, Fun Facts, tagged , , , , , , on June 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Until there is definitive evidence that the unique matrix or “chemical soup” of wine, by itself, leads to healthier outcomes for individuals, we need to stop with this “wine is healthy” talk.  The only thing we can say for sure at this point of the scientific path is that a healthy individual probably won’t suffer any negative outcomes by moderately drinking, preferably with food, and not as an attempt to alleviate stress.  Admittedly, I’m the one pushing last point, but I have good evidence and following that advice definitely will not hurt you.  Having said that…

Are people saying wine is good or bad for you today?  I can never keep up. According to some Google searches, on May 21, 2017 all of the “news” sources that I’ve never heard of viewed wine as health savior, but on May 22, 2017, that all changed.  The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs published two articles the day before looking at the potential associations between moderate drinking and long-term cardiovascular health.  Both of these articles were critical of how numerous studies conducted previously that suggested (not proved) there is a link between light to moderate drinking and reduced rates of cardiovascular disease may have made a common error in research by assuming that the results seen in the groups of individuals studied were widely applicable to everyone in the general population.  And then this happened:

 

Search

First, neither of the papers were about wine specifically so let’s tone it down “Starts at 60” (Tag line: “Australia and New Zealand’s, and increasingly, the worlds largest digital media platform for over 60s.”).  Second, neither of these papers proved or even attempted to prove that there is no association between wine and long-term cardiovascular health.  The edition of the journal these articles were published in even opens with the following text (red text mine):

This issue of the journal contains two articles with three associated commentaries on the yet-unanswered question of the association between moderate drinking and cardiovascular health as well as general mortality.

Third, the idea that a single food or drink item should be deemed “Healthy” or “Not healthy” is beyond ludicrous because that’s just not how health works.

In general, this see-sawing you see in the news about whether something is healthy or not is a result of misinterpretations of what the results of a single study or small number of studies say.  Most journalists aren’t great at interpreting scientific literature unless they also have a science background; wine and food writers are especially bad.  As a general rule of understanding scientific research: the more studies that are conducted on a particular question, the less likely any single study is going to contradict all of the research performed before it.  For example, let’s take a look possible outcomes of the question: Is there an association (relationship) between moderate drinking and cardiovascular health?

  • Yes, there is a positive association between moderate drinking and cardiovascular health. (This means moderate drinking could make you heart-healthy)
  • Yes, there is a negative association between moderate drinking and cardiovascular health. (This means moderate drinking could make you heart-unhealthy)
  • No, there is no association between moderate drinking and cardiovascular health. (This means being a moderate drinker in itself won’t determine your heart health)

The results of every study conducted on this question will add evidence to one of these possible outcomes. I generally visualize this as each study producing a single cube of evidence of roughly the same size/weight/volume as any other study that gets filed into one of the outcome columns.  Why the same size/weight/volume? Because an important aspect of the scientific process is that an experiment is repeatable.  The process is highly democratic in this respect which means that a single study cannot overturn the bulk of work done through previous studies.  A single study can influence future studies to be done to repeat the results however, which could lead to a turning of the tide, so to speak, but this process takes time.

Evidence

*Not actually representative of the current body of evidence no matter how much we want it to be true.

It is also important to note that in the scientific method there is no point where testing is stopped which is why declarative statements that an ultimate truth have been found are foolhardy.  Yet, there are times when the body of evidence is so large and convincing that it paints a picture of an inevitable outcome.  In other words, the pile of evidence is so vast in one column that the chances of that changing are slim to none.  Human-caused climate change, no association between vaccines and autism, an association between tobacco use and cancer, the theory of evolution, Aaron Berdofe being a pretty cool guy…these are all areas where the evidence paints a clear picture of the inevitable outcome.

But, as the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs pointed out, we just don’t have a clear picture yet on if there is an association between moderate alcohol consumption and cardiovascular health and general mortality.  Same goes for most health related questions about alcohol.  The only certain thing we know about our relationship with alcohol is that if we drink too much we can permanently damage ourselves and perhaps die.  How we define “too much” varies by individual, but that’s why we have population health recommendations about how much is too much.  To a somewhat lesser degree of certainty, we also know that there seem to be few negative consequences to drinking lightly or moderately.  Again, thresholds and circumstances affecting that may vary.

None of this changes the the fact that wine drinkers just want to believe that wine will ultimately make them healthier people.  It’s perfectly natural to hope that our potential problems in the future can be alleviated by either doing nothing or continuing to do the things we currently enjoy.  I do believe that it is within this shared hope amongst wine drinkers that we write articles extolling the health benefits of wine, sell wine by incorporating it in the idea of being part of a healthy meal, or lecture beer drinkers on why wine is better.  I don’t think wine professionals or yes, even health/wellness professionals are being sinister when repeating incorrect or perhaps misleading statements regarding the relationship between wine and health*, but I do wish we’d all start being a little more thoughtful when talking about the topic.

If you are a wine professional, I would recommend you stop using binary descriptors when discussing wine and health like good/bad and healthy/unhealthy.  Adding or subtracting wine to a person’s diet, as we understand it today, does not make that person’s diet healthier or unhealthier.  Are there some interesting interactions that happen when we drink wine that have what we consider to be positive effects on our bodies? Yes, certainly.  There are also some effects we consider to be negative as well, but it’s very complex and research is underway to figure out in exactly what conditions those effects will take place.

It’s also good to remember that what the research says and what the headlines say are not always in alignment.  For example, the studies I first referenced about 1,000 words don’t conclude as the headlines purport that wine is “NOT good for the heart”.  They do suggest that some of the cubes of evidence presented to the “Good for your heart” column (Yes +) maybe need more work done before they can officially be put there.  I would at least recommend reading the parts of the study referenced in an article labeled “Abstract” and “Results” if you can.  Frustratingly though, most writers fail to provide a reference link to the original study they are basing their article off of.  Another frustrating road block you may run into is that the study is behind some journal’s paywall and I doubt you’ll want to pay the $25 to read it.  For that, all I can do is apologize for the world and let you know we’re working on it.

Therefore, until the number of studies performed and the results of those studies give a definitive picture to the question of how wine may affect our long-term health the best answer to give someone asking is a good shrug and tell someone that unless their doctor says otherwise, moderate drinking isn’t going to negatively affect you and too much will obviously kill you.  Of course, if you want to put a twinkle in your eye along with a sly grin and whisper “Maybe there’s something to it…” before taking a thoughtful sip of a particularly enchanting glass of wine, I won’t stop you.  Gourmand’s are willing to take the risk for pleasure, but do they do know there is a risk.

 

 

 

*There are a few companies these days claiming they can prevent headaches or hangovers from wine and there is simply no scientific evidence to back up their claims.  This is somewhat sinister and potentially in violation of Truth In Advertising laws.

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5 Wine Evaluations That Are Less Scientific Than You Think

Posted in Education, Fun Facts, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »

As one does, I was having a conversation about spicy peppers the other day and someone referenced the Scoville scale when comparing two peppers to show that the difference in hotness between them was exponential.  After that though, knowing a little about how capsaicin causes us to perceive heat,  I started wondering how exactly does one measure a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU)?  So I looked it up and it turns out the Scoville scale is a subjective measure that relies on how diluted with water a pepper needs to be in order to not find it spicy anymore and not how much capsaicin is actually in the pepper.  In other words, it’s a subjective measurement, not an objective one.  There is an objective test for measuring capsaicinoid concentration now though; it’s called high-performance liquid chromatography and it was developed well after Wilbur Scovile was dead.

It turns out that Wilbur’s subjective test does a decent enough job of matching up with the objective one which is probably why it persists as the defacto industry scale today (or at least amongst people discussing peppers).  That got me thinking about the number of of “measurements” used in wine tasting there are and just how subjective most of them really are.  Some of them do a decent enough job of helping to answer questions like what’s different between these two wines or perhaps which wine you should bring to a party hosted by someone who reads too many wine magazines, but there are a lot of wine-related questions that can’t be answered by these methods…not that this has stopped people from trying.  Which ones help and which ones don’t? Settle in and read on to find out.

Aroma Wheels

AromaWheel

The science of wine aroma is beautifully (or frustratingly) complicated.  Let’s take a quick trip down the process flow of how wine aromas come to be:

1.) Each grape variety has its own genotype that determines the spectrum of possible aromatic compounds the grape can develop and will have when crushed and squeezed into juice.

2.) The environment the grapes develop in which includes the climate, the weather, how the vine was trained, the soil composition, pest and disease exposure, and a whole host of other environmental factors reduce that genetic spectrum of possible aromatic compounds into what is known as the phenotype, or how the grape’s genes express themselves given the environment they develop in.

3.) How the wine is then made from the resulting grape variety or blend of varieties will not only modify the aromatic compounds in pre-fermentation grape juice, but also add in new aromas from the yeast and fermentation process as well how the wine is aged, especially if oak is used.  To make things more complicated, various wine making techniques used to refine the appearance or change tactile sensations of the wine can also modify those aromatic compounds or even strip some out.  Those compounds can then again be modified over time as the wine ages through slow exposure to oxygen.  This is all what is desired to happen so it’s not even taking into account flaws in the process that can also modify the aromatic compounds; usually for the worse in terms of our preferences.

4.) Which aromatic compounds in the wine actually get to the olfactory receptors in our noses and throats is determined by the weights of the compounds, the temperature of the wine, the shape of the glass, the amount of oxygen that’s been infused into it through either swirling the glass, decanting, or just letting the wine sit for awhile.  Compounding the complexity of these aromatic compounds are the other potential aromas coming from the food in front of you or the food you’ve already consumed wafting up from your stomach.  And that’s just taking into account the olfactory receptors scattered throughout your nose, mouth, and throat.  Various organs like our livers also contain olfactory receptors.  Oh, and sperm does too.

5.) The receptors triggered by what we smell send signals up to olfactory bulb in our brains creating an “image” of what is being detected which may or may not change slightly based on our current state of mind or environmental cues like the color of the wine itself.  Then we compare that picture with other smell “images” we have sitting in our memory banks of things we’ve smelled before to see if we can find a match.

Simple, right? [Eye-roll]

Wine professionals and amateurs alike spend a lot of time describing what a wine smells like.  Back in 1984, Ann C. Noble, who is an actual sensory chemist with a PhD and who has done actual research on techniques and applications of wine tasting, developed what has become a homogenizing tool in the wine world: The Wine Aroma Wheel.  The wheel contains three levels of aroma characterizations that increase with specificity as you move outward.  For example, the specific aroma of “Pineapple”, which is in the third or outer-most tier, falls under the more encompassing term “Tropical Fruit” in the second-tier category, which itself falls under the general category of “Fruity” in the first-tier.  This structuring of a defined set of terms was modeled on what was already being utilized for whiskey evaluations at the time.  To use the wheel as it was intended as a smell-assist guide you classify what you are smelling to a category in the central or first-tier, then reclassify it into one of the possible subcategories in the middle or second-tier, and then finally reclassify it again into the outer or third-tier.

The purpose of this tool was so that people could elucidate the differences between certain wines they were in the process of discussing with someone and in that respect, it is an extremely helpful tool.  But where did this list of aromas come from?  Keeping in mind the process flow of how aromas get from grape to your brain, the development of this particular tool is limited primarily to the last step, #5.  Dr. Noble sifted through numerous tasting notes which in all actuality are people’s subjective interpretations of what aromas are being observed as well as some actual sensory research that identified various aromatic compounds and created a refined list based on the most common descriptors used.

Now humans are pretty good sniffers, despite what some people say, and we can train ourselves to be better at identifying particular aromas.  For blind tastings of wine, experts use clues, including aromas, to discern where the wine comes from.  A Chardonnay from a warmer region will generally have more tropical fruit aromas if we are using the aroma wheel, and those from cooler regions tend to have more stone fruit aromas.  However, this isn’t necessarily true 100% of the time, especially as wine making techniques advance and our brain/nose combo is an imperfect instrument for sussing out the actual aromatic compounds.

A more perfect instrument is a spectrophotometer.  Spectrophotometry is one method for figuring out the chemical composition of a substance and it works be measuring the amount of light absorbed by a substance at different frequencies.  Chemical compounds all have unique signatures that can be identified by this method without the “noise” that our human instruments can experience.  While there is a massive library of these spectrophotometry signatures built, we still haven’t fully connected the presence of a cocktail of aromatic compounds (cocktails themselves in some cases) with how we will interpret them.  For instance we know that Methoxypyrazines (sometimes green pepper aromas, sometimes mint, sometimes…) can be detected by humans as an aroma at 2 parts per trillion in a substance whereas Diacetyl (Buttery aromas) can be detected at 0.1 parts per million.  That’s about a factorial difference and that’s not even taking into account how other aromatic compounds shape our interpretation of those aromas.

While the scientific understanding of wine isn’t there yet, some day we may be able to list out the all the aromas you could possibly smell in a wine based on the genetic code, how that grape develops, the wine making process, etc.  We may even discover that there are possible aromas for a wine which no one has gotten out of a particular set of grapes thus far and we’ll develop new wine making techniques to achieve them.  Until then, we’ll discuss the differences between various wines using the Wine Aroma Wheel or the number of emulators it has inspired.  Just know that its only slightly more scientific than talking about what a passing cloud looks like so you should by no means restrict yourself to it or assume that someone who already knows the words on the wheel is somehow a better smell detective than you are.

Age-ability

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How long should you wait to drink that bottle of wine?  The question is based in the adages of “Wine gets better with age” and tales of astounding vintages.  The truth is that no one really knows exactly when the best time to drink a bottle of wine is.  Partly, because it’s a matter of preference, but mostly because what happens when wine ages in the bottle is still somewhat of a mystery.  The little we do know about wine aging is humorously depicted on the chart on the back wine label above that probably was meant to be dead serious.

The desire to age wine hasn’t actually been a big thing for wine drinkers for the bulk of the time humans have been making wine and consuming it.  When humans first started making wine, it was consumed as soon as possible since we hadn’t come up with good methods to store and transport wine in.  Even when we did figure out how to make heavy amphoras or light leather pouches we either didn’t stray far from the amphora or couldn’t carry much wine in our leather canteens so we consumed as much as we could until it “went bad”. It wasn’t until wine makers began adding sulfur in addition to the sulfur that occurs naturally via fermentation that we were able to keep wines for any significant period of time.

And what does it mean anyway when wine “goes bad” anyway?  In general, it means one of two things: 1.) It no longer smells like healthy wine or doesn’t have much of any smell or 2.) It is in the process of turning into vinegar.  The second undesirable occurrence happens when acetic acid bacteria gets into the wine.  Sometimes this happens by accident or neglect and other times it happens on purpose when someone actually wants to make vinegar.  The first issue though is a result of either contamination or willful oxygen exposure that has taken the wine past what I call the Point of Diminishing Maturity.  In other words, the bulk of the volatile chemicals known as aromatics have been persuaded by oxygen to leave. winearomaticsexperiencechart-0012

There are 4 factors that generally determine how long a wine can age before getting to the Point of Diminishing Maturity: Sugar, Tannins, Acid, and Alcohol which all act as preservatives in addition to the sulfur added.  The simple explanation is that these factors help slow the oxidation of the wine and oxygen is what promotes the aging.  The balance of those items (excluding sulfur since it shouldn’t be added at human perceivable levels) are a determination of the wine’s quality, which is separate to the question of “How long should I age this wine?”  In general, the more preserving factors there are in the wine, the longer it will be able to sit in your cellar before it reaches the point of diminishing maturity.  Ergo, oaked/tannic red wines will be able to age longer than most white wines, and dessert wines with lots of sugar or fortified wines will be able to age longer than anything else.

But answering the specific question of how long to age a particular wine gets a bit tricky.  For red wines aged in oak, because that’s generally what people are referring to when they talk about letting a bottle sit in a cellar, the main consideration is the state of the tannins in the wine.  Wine professionals usually refer to the tannins of a newly bottled red wine that was aged in oak as harsh.  For older wines, they generally refer to the tannins as being soft.  Those observations are unfortunately about the extent of where the scientific knowledge of what’s happening when a wine ages (and I just checked the Third Edition of the Wine Science Principles and Applications text book on that one).

There are a variety of different types of tannins and depending on the types and sizes of them in the wine they will feel differently in your mouth.  Just in terms of oak aging, a professional taster can usually tell the difference between a wine aged in American oak and one aged in French oak.  Acid, proteins, and a whole host of other chemicals can have an effect on tannins over time.  To what extent and what types of effects are largely unknown at this point, but we do know that some tannins do in fact breakdown over time which could be one of the causes of why the tannins in an aged wine appear “soft”.

The other aspect of an aged wine is that it tends to lose it’s brighter fruit (or lighter weight) characteristics over time because of oxygen exposure.  Eventually, the heavier fruit characteristics and earthy tones will go by way of oxygen exposure too, but how long that will take is highly variable and it’s something you find out after the fact.  Right now, answering the question of “When will this wine taste best?” can only be answered retrospectively, despite the number of wine professionals that attempt to make predictions.  However, wine professional estimates based on their collective experiences of tasting wines of different vintages is the best information we have to go on to answer the more general question that we should be asking: “What’s the maximum amount of time I should let this wine sit before I uncork it?”

To answer that, I would tell you to drink the wine within a few years of buying it off the shelf.  The vast majority of wines made, and I do mean vast, especially if you’re spending under $30, are intended to be consumed immediately upon purchase.  If the wine maker thinks the wine would be best if it sat for 5-10 years first because of the amount of oak aging, it’s good to listen to them.  They’ve been tasting their own wines for years, including the ones that have been aging and they want you to taste their wine as they intended so even if they put it in a stupid chart like above, they are a trustworthy source.  But aging wines after 10 years is where things get even trickier.  Some wines aged beyond 10 years will still be lively and fruity, some will be boring, some will be contaminated with bacteria, some will be complex and mesmerizing, but the fact is, no one can accurately predict how an aged wine will fare.  It can be an intellectual treat to drink older wines to see how they turned out, but don’t for one second expect them all to match up with your preferences as to what you think is good.

Tannin Scale

The Tannin Scale, or more accurately, the Total Polyphenol Index (TPI) is an actual scientific measurement that a wine lab can provide for a wine producer.  Some wine producers are including it in their vintage statistics and from that perspective, it’s actually interesting to take a look at over time alongside other harvest information like Brix and Total Acidity (TA).  In fact, these numbers are much of the basis behind those Vintage Charts that have been losing relevancy in modern times, but more on those later. Why the Tannin Scale has made this list, despite it being actually based in science, is that some professional wine tasters are now using the TPI score in their assessments as if it has some relevancy as to how someone will perceive the tannins in a wine.

Let’s get one thing clear: All tannins are polyphenols, but not all polyphenols are tannins. Scroll through this to see an incomplete list of polyphenols in wine (there will be a lot of scrolling). Generally, when actively tasting wines (as opposed to just drinking them) the amount of tannins will be rated on a Low-Medium-High scale.  There aren’t actual measurements to this scale, it’s just a subjective assessment based on the range of wines you’ve already had.  In other words, it takes experience to assess how much tannin is in the particular wine being tasted in relation to other wines.  The range of the scale is based on what the individual has tasted in the past.  The tricky thing about tannin perception (the “cotton-mouth” feeling you get caused by tannins binding to saliva molecules) is that it changes based on the types of tannins and their state in a wine and other factors such as acidity and sweetness…or if you’re eating, the salt or acid on your food.

Given that the total volume of tannins is only a fraction of the TPI and given that the perception of tannins in a wine is dependent on a variety of factors besides the total volume, knowing the TPI is essentially worthless.

 

Wine (100-pt) Scores

I’m going to be upfront here and just let you know that I don’t know what goes into calculating the ratings given out by wine quality “authorities” like Robert Parker and Wine Spectator.  Their methodologies are proprietary so only those who do the calculating know how they are totaled up.  They may have developed some top secret techniques, heavily based in scientific reasoning, to objectively calculate their scores.  They may also just be throwing darts at a board with numbers on it.  However, there is certainly evidence that throwing darts may be a more accurate assessment than an objective assessment.

For instance, the same wines generally have different ratings based on who is rating them.  Scroll through these Riojas and check out the scores listed.  Usually the variations aren’t wildly different: a one or two point difference on a 100-pt scale doesn’t seem too significant.  However, once you factor in that no one has really heard of a wine being rated below a 60 and no one really publishes a score below an 80, a point or two is more statistically significant on a 40- or even 20-point scale than the supposed 100-pt scale.  Additionally, there’s some heavy speculation that certain raters have certain preferences which means the ratings are most likely better thought of as assessments of how the rater feels a wine stacks up against what they deem as “perfect” instead of an actual assessment of quality or how much you will enjoy the wine.

Vintage Chart

Vintage Charts have historically been the wine aficionado’s go-to guides when deciding what to pull out of their cellars and drink.  They’ve also been deemed essential to the process of selecting a wine from a restaurant’s wine list and the memorization of them was crucial to cementing one’s status as The Highlander the one true wine lover amongst one’s friends. Now they are predominately used to help set prices for wine auctions.  Vintages are always talked about in terms of what the weather was like that year and while weather is definitely a factor in how a wine will turn out it is becoming less and less relevant as wine making techniques improve.

VintageChartFull vintage chart here.

The sacrosanct irony of the wine vintage chart is that it takes all of the things I’ve listed in this post as not being overly scientific and puts them in a handy chart for you!  Vintage charts are not compilations of grape quality, lab quality metrics, and tasting evaluations, they are purely the last one: tasting evaluations, and not properly samples ones.  What usually happens is that a producer of a wine vintage chart will ask a few wineries in a particular region how they feel their wines are that year and then compare that to what their tasting staff is saying about what they’ve tasted and come up with their best guess as to how a wine from a particular region will be in terms of “Quality” that year.  The method hardly provides what a statistician would call a good sample.  Since access to previous vintage wines may prove to be difficult, it’s even more of a stretch to find a good sample of aging wines that you could accurately assess a region by.  This leaves you with a chart that may be fun to look at, but it’s a bit like listening to a bunch of gossipy rumors in a high school cafeteria.

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Sometimes I Add A Few Drops Of Water To My Whiskey Now

Posted in Fun Facts, Whiskey, tagged , , , on June 4, 2015| 3 Comments »

WhiskeyGifThere was a time, not too long ago that I drank whiskey neat because I was a man or something.  OK, there were actually some good reasons for this:

  1. If you order whiskey neat in a bar, there is a low risk of them screwing up the drink.  Plus, you know exactly how much alcohol you are getting compared to everything else that might potentially go in the glass.
  2. If I’m having a good tasting whiskey, I just want to taste the whiskey.  No accompaniment needed.
  3. I have a beard sometimes and therefore it’s required of me by society to drink whiskey neat.
  4. Everyone I’ve talked to generally agrees that I look BA drinking whiskey neat.  Some have even gone as far as saying I look like a BAMF, but they may be over-exuberant.

Over this past winter however, I did a little dabbling in the H20 realm, and now I’ve been adding a few drops into some whiskeys depending on my mood.  As a frequenter of high class bars all around the world, as I know you are, you may have picked up on this little technique and even perhaps noted that certain high class bars will serve a small dram of water alongside the whiskey.  This is not a suggestion that the bartender thinks you may be alcoholic or can’t handle your liquor as I once thought in my early twenties when asked if I wanted a glass of water alongside my whiskey.  The presentation of water alongside whiskey is more of a, “If you desire it…” offering.

A whiskey enthusiast might state that adding a few drops of water to the glass will “activate” the aroma compounds in the whiskey.   A logical and cynical mind might respond: “What the hell does that mean?” Usually, the whiskey enthusiast really has no idea, but hopefully is at least speaking from the experience they have had where they prefer the whiskey with a few drops of water opposed to the whiskey sans agua.  So what’s really going on?

In the simplest sense, the addition of a bit of water is masking certain aromas and enhancing others.  That fact is really the actionable part of any research that’s been done so far on the subject.  If you want to get really sciencey, (Which OMG, yes, do I) then you can read a nice little paper on it here.  If you want an educated professional’s nicer description, you can read it here.

Therefore, if you want to have a go at this little bit of scientific manipulation here’s what you do:

  1. Grab two glasses
  2. Pour an equal amount of whiskey into both
  3. Smell and taste both, perhaps with some water in between
  4. Drop, let’s say, 5-10 drops of water into one of the glasses
  5. Smell and taste both again.  Do they smell or taste slightly different?
  6. Proceed to drink both glasses of whiskey.  Don’t act like you weren’t going to.

If you truly want to be scientific about it, I would get someone else to apply the water for you, but you’re probably drinking alone again so don’t worry to much about it.  The key word in step #5 is “Different”.  Notice I didn’t say “Better” or “Worse”.  Just different. Different strokes for different folks.

In applying this new found knowledge, whenever you come across a whiskey that you like, but it’s perhaps not “Popping” for you; give it a few drops of water.  You can really keep adding drops of water until the point where you start telling yourself that “This tastes like watered-down whiskey.”  If you come across a whiskey you don’t like, you are free to use it for fire-based parlor tricks, a fuel source, or a disinfectant in the event of a bar fight.  Water dilution will never help a bad whiskey unless it’s diluted to the point it can no longer be tasted.

Additionally, that scientific research article mentioned above which you didn’t read also concludes that cooling down the whiskey (AKA: adding ice) may have a similar, albeit through a different mechanism, effect.  Personally, I haven’t found a whiskey I prefer at “Ice temperature” opposed to room temperature or slightly below room temperature, but I will leave that to personal preference.

For those that really want to be an annoying snob to their friends, I would recommend only utilizing water sourced from a location near the distillery of the whiskey you are drinking.  While there is certainly no proof behind it, some people do claim that utilizing the whiskey’s local water is truly the ultimate experience. I think something could be said for not using overly hard or overly soft tap water, or perhaps even the ice that has been sitting in your freezer for the past month, but here in Minneapolis, the tap water is just fine.

Think of this as an extra tool in your drinking tool belt and not something that should be done every time.  “Whiskey need a little sprucing? *Sprinkle in some magic water!” And remember, if you hide the water, people will think you’re drinking it neat anyway.

*Extra points for creative sprinkling technique.

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How We Smell

Posted in Education, Fun Facts, Research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2014| 6 Comments »

photo-2

Of all the protuberances extending from our bodies, it is our noses that are held in highest esteem when it comes to enjoying wine.  The Schnoz of a trained wine professional is thought to harbor more natural capabilities than those of normal people.  However, it hasn’t been until relatively recently that the world of science has begun to figure out just how is it we detect and identify odors.

A good reasoning behind this progress is that it hasn’t been until relatively recently that we have been able to begin to understand how our brains work.  It turns out that the nose of a Sommelier is nothing special.  In terms of hardware, we all have approximately the same level of sensitivity.  Therefore, the only real major difference between the nose of an amateur and that of a professional is, like everything else in the world, the amount of practice and training.  That and bravado.  Professionals know that sometimes emphatically stating that something is the way they say it is, regardless of the truth, can be taken seriously. Because really, who’s to argue?

All that practice and training of course, does little to “tone” our sniffers, but more to educate the olfactory memories of our brains.  That’s right, we learn how to pick out smells in the same manner we learn how to play a song.  We memorize the pattern.  This of course means we can mistake one smell for another in moments of error.  Our memories are imperfect beasts.

Speaking of beasts, how many times have you been told that dogs or other animals are far superior smellers that we humans are?  Let me please disabuse you of that notion.  There are two ways to smell.  One is called Orthonasal Smell which happens when suck air in through our nostrils.  There is no doubt that animals with larger and longer snouts than us are superior at this kind of sniffing.  More space for sensors to pick up all of those molecules.  However, there is another type of smelling called Retronasal Smell which happens when we breathe out through our nose.  As far as we can tell ape descendants are the only animals that have a sizeable retronasal passageway to make this kind of function useable.  Therefore, we smell things before we put them in our mouths, and we also smell things (hopefully food) after they have been put into our mouths.  Two smells for the price of one.

He doesn't even care if the steak is cooked well, does he?

He doesn’t even care if the steak is cooked well, does he?

One could say we have a much more developed second dimension of smell.  It is this secondary smell combined with the enhanced processing powers of our brains that actually make us far superior smellers that most of the animal kingdom.  Interestingly, we are the only animals that appear to be concerned with the quality of the calories being put into our mouths for ingestion.  It turns out that even if you have lost your sense of orthonasal smell, that doesn’t necessarily mean your retronasal smell capabilities will be affected.

So what are smells exactly?  It depends upon which part we are referring to.  In wine, a number of different smells that can be found in wines are handily put onto what we call aroma wheels or in lists for our reference.  However, the aromas listed are actually collections of a number of different aromatic compounds which themselves are combinations of various different individual molecules.

Let’s take rosemary for example.  If you were to smell the plant you would say, “This smells like rosemary.” But a more trained sniffer would say, “I smell a combination of woody and floral notes as well as some conifer, clove, and eucalyptus”.  And beyond that, each of those individual aromas are either single molecular compounds or a combination of a few of them.   So an aroma must be thought of as a complex object and not a single entity much like a picture.  A picture after all is a collection of shapes and colors and that analogy is quite a bit more appropriate as will soon be realized. The term bouquet is perhaps more appropriate when discussing the collections or aromas in wines, but we tend to use those terms differently (if not incorrectly) in the world of wine so I will forgo its use here.

Before we recognize aromas though, they must first pass through our snouts to be captured.  Again, once on the way in (orthonasal), and once on the way out (retronasal). How that happens is really still up for debate.  The previous theory was that we had receptors that would accept a single odor molecule much like a key fitting into a lock.  That has been modified over the years with the allowance that perhaps more than one odor molecule may fit onto a receptor.  After all, we might not even have space to put a specific receptor for every single scent we can sniff.  An additional theory is that the odors vibrate the receptors instead of locking into them; much like sound vibrates our ear drums.  Gas Chromatography analysis of smelly things is somewhat based on this vibrational theory as it is used to identify the individual molecular compounds which it visualizes in the form of a plot of different frequencies.  This looks a bit like the sound waves of an erratic melody or the EKG print out of a failing heart.

Regardless of what the actual entry method is and how much is detected, each odor received sends a unique set of signals to a portion of our frontal lobes in the brain that is formed in the shape of a light bulb aptly called the Olfactory Bulb. Because our odor sensing receptors are tuned to multiple odors, the signals flowing up will tend to have overlaps as they hit the Olfactory Bulb.  The outer layer of this section called the Glomeruli is composed of individual cells, much like an LED screen which is “lit up” neurologically speaking with the pattern of the smell.  fMRI studies have actually been able to watch this happen and produce visual images of smell.  Yes, that’s right; when you smell a strawberry, it creates a different image in your brain, than when you smell a banana.

Fig2-c4

However, our noses have different thresholds of detectability for different aromas.  For instance, TCA (2,4,6-Trichloroanisole), the odor we speak of when a wine is “Corked” can be detected when it is merely a few parts of a trillion.  Diacetyl, on the other hand, which is the basis for all of the buttery and creamy aromas takes a few parts per thousand to be detected.  And while there is some variation between individuals on what these thresholds are, there is perhaps more variation found depending on what kind of wine the aroma is in.

To complicate our perception of what we are smelling even further, the aromatic image that appears when we sniff can also be shaped by how we are mentally framed and primed beforehand.  In other words, we can be influenced by what have smelled previously, what we are currently craving, or even what we have been told about what we are going to smell.  For instance, it has been shown that even professional wine tasters have insisted that aromas exist in a given wine even though they do not just because the color of the wine they were smelling had been changed unbeknownst to them.  Perhaps, no one has sneakily changed the color of your wine, but how many of us can recall a time where a particular odor, good or bad, just would not leave us and we insisted we smelled it everywhere.  The nestling of our olfactory processing center so closely to our memory center helps us emotionally connect to aromas, but can also lead to confusion when too much information is presented during a sniff.

Traditionally, when it comes to wine we rely on seasoned experts to assist us in how we should perceive a wine’s aromas. While we assume that the conclusion of a practiced professional will be more consistently correct than an amateur, they are still dealing with a measurement where the human nose is more precise than any other means of measure that we have.  That is to say, you can never be completely sure if the overly poetic description of a wine’s aroma is what is actually emanating from the wine or even if it is the same as what you will sense.  Helpful for the general gist of what we can expect, but should be taken with a grain of salt.  Therefore, when it comes to flavor matching in wine and food pairings, it is best to speak in generalities instead of specifics.  The red fruits in the wine will probably bring out the red fruits in the food even if they aren’t the overripe and slightly confectioned cherries you were told to expect.

Our sense of smell, once relegated to our least powerful sense, has actually been shown to perhaps be our most affecting sense.  Its connection to our memories creates emotional responses when triggered and as we uncover more about how the sense works, it is taking on a new level of dimensionality.  However, the typical wine drinker should rejoice in knowing that even if we marvel at the skill a professional demonstrates when they can identify a wine at first sniff, we all smell things a little better after we have taken the first sip.

Additional sources for reading:

Neurogastronomy: How the brain creates flavor and why it matters – Gordon Shepherd

Taste Buds and Molecules: The art and science of food, wine, and flavor – Francois Chartier

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Pairing Wine With All The Things You’re Not Suppose To

Posted in Cabernet Sauvignon, Education, Fun Facts, Zinfandel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2012| 3 Comments »

Pictured: Rebellious youth. His mother is ashamed.

Recently, I was feeling particularly rebellious after listening to a somewhat inaccurate lecture on wine and food pairing.  In the wine world, there are a lot of traditions that just aren’t based on actual facts.  Most of them center around pairing wine with food and most of them attempt to tell you whether you’ll enjoy the experience or not.  This is like someone telling you that if you go to a NASCAR race you will enjoy it without checking to see if that is your particular cup of tea or not.  And if a tea metaphor is being used, NASCAR probably isn’t your thing, but I digress.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, when I’m feeling particularly rebellious, I do what anyone would do:  Sit down and set about proving whomever it is wrong, preferably while listening to some particularly loud music while wearing particularly unruly clothing and using a particularly #@!$ing uncouth vocabulary.  In other words, I sat down and paired a blended (Zin and Cab Sauv) red wine from Sonoma with a bunch of things that the “experts” tell you not to, just to see what really happens.  Admittedly, I’ve tried each of these combinations before which is why I was feeling rebellious, but never at the same time and never with writing utensil in hand.

The pairings were chosen based on the amount of times I’ve been told to never pair a red wine with them.  Citrus fruit (I only had a lime, but a lemon works too), Soy Sauce, Vinegar, and Salt.  For the vinegar and salt, I even selected two different types of each, just to cover all the bases.  Then I compared six aspects of wine between the control (just tasting the wine by its lonesome) and each pairing.  In this case, I’m using the terms “Fruit” to describe, well, the fruity flavors of a wine and “Bouquet” to describe the earthy, meaty, and generally not fruity characteristics.   And yes, of course I put it into a table:

Conclusions:

Each one of these lowers the perception of tannin or astringency (that cotton ball feeling in your mouth).  This is the main reason why the wine world rejects the pairing of red wine with any of these components.  If you don’t mind the reduction in tannin though, or perhaps if you didn’t want it there in the first place, this practice makes perfect sense!  However, the trade-off with most of these is that they also reduce the perception of the fruit characteristics.  The two notable exceptions to this are the lime and the Kosher salt, which do a fine job of maintaining the fruit.

Other observations:

  • Soy sauce is the only pairing that will enhance the non-fruit characteristics, mainly due to umami (savoriness) matching with the umami in the wine.
  • Vinegar will increase the acid, no matter what kind it is.
  • Iodized table salt sucks.  It blows.  It’s the pits.

Side Rant:

Salt should take bitterness out of things; that is its role in food.  In this case though, it actually increased my perception of bitterness.  Now, it didn’t increase the amount of bitter compounds, but it didn’t mitigate bitterness in the amounts that I had it (finger-tip’s worth) while slightly reducing everything else, thus increasing the perception of bitterness.  I see why people feel the need to douse all of their meals with this stuff.  It doesn’t work in small quantities.  Hypertensive Americans should revolt against iodized salt…or just use Kosher salt instead.

P.S. The science world has actually proven that pairing a big Cabernet Sauvignon with a steak works because of the salt the seasons the steak and not because the tannins are latching on to the fat.  Read Molecular Gastronomy if you’re into geeky food science happenings.

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Sushi and Wine Part 3: The Conclusion and What You Need To Know

Posted in Carmenere, Education, Fun Facts, Gruner Veltliner, Syrah/Shiraz, Viognier, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

I know, I know, it’s taken me forever to get this up!  Hopefully, this conclusion to my exploration of the sushi and wine experience makes up for trying your patience.  I promised charts.  I promised science.  I promised that you’d be able to comfortably pick out what wine you want for the experience you want when having sushi.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I deliver all of those things in this riveting end point to your wine and sushi voyage.  For the very impatient (aka lazy bums, slackers, non-geeks), please scroll to the chart at the bottom to get the answers without having to learn.

Where We Left Off…

In Part 1, we did a review of the existing “literature”.  By that, I mean we Googled the heck out of pairing wine with sushi and came up with a whole lot of nothing useable.  Preferences were listed aplenty, but no guides existed to help you in the sushi restaurant.

In Part 2, we reviewed the components of wine and sushi and laid out some plausible theories as to what kinds of interactions could go down when mixing and matching.  Here I brought in the insight of Tim Hanni, MW to get his take on what actually happens when wine and food are mixed in our noses, our mouths and our brains.  We also discussed some of the existing claims out there and Tim happily took down a lot of the nonsense that has been floating around.  At the conclusion I delivered 4 specific interactions that really affect the sushi and wine experience.  To repeat and save you the trouble of clicking the link and having to read:

  • When a flavor component of the food is similar to that in the wine, the experience of that flavor is enhanced.  This is called flavor matching.
  • The perception of alcohol will increase when paired with sweet, umami-tasting or spicy foods.
  • The perception of spiciness will decrease when paired to a wine with more acidity.
  • Tannins will noticeably diminish when they encounter salt (soy sauce), citric acid (lemon juice) or vinegar (pickled ginger).

 Some More Science

In doing some more research on flavor components, I came across a fascinating article in Nature entitled Flavor Network and the Principles of Food Pairing.  When you mix wine with food, it’s really an extension of the existing ingredients that are already in the dish. We have our preferences as to which herbs and spices work in which dishes, so we should have our preferences as to which wines work with which dishes too.  In the article they broke down all of the components of food down to the compound level.  You see, it’s the combination of certain compounds that we interpret as flavor and aroma.  Then they ran through various recipe sites on-line and compared which components always showed up together and which ones did not.  The most interesting outcome of this study was that they found in Western cooking, we generally like to put together ingredients that share compounds.  In Eastern cooking, we generally like to put together ingredients that do not share compounds.  Now think back to the first interaction I listed.  If two items match up on flavor/aroma compounds, then that flavor/aroma will be enhanced.  If two items don’t match up on the compounds, then nothing is really enhanced, but things are made a bit more complex.  Trouble wrapping your head around that one?  Thankfully, the authors of the paper came up with an excellent chart to show which ingredients share components (closer together) and which ones have differing components (farther away).  Definitely click on it to get the larger view.  

To associate this with our sushi and wine pairing, this means that if we have a wine that shares a lot of compounds with the components in the sushi, we are going to get an enhancement of that particular flavor or aroma.  The wines that do this are going to typically be whites since they carry a lot of the green, tropical fruit, floral, and minerally components.  If we have a wine that diverges from the compounds of the sushi components, we are going get a more complex sensation of taste.  This will happen with the vast majority of reds with their more earthy, red fruit, and black fruit components.  I generally like to think of this concept in terms of sound waves because they do the same thing.  A sound wave is enhanced if the same wave gets overlaid on to it and the sound wave is neutralized if the exact opposite wave is laid on top of it.  [As a side note, the latter method is essentially how noise cancellation works.] [As a side note to the side note, I think the idea of creating flavor or aroma component “chords” is something very real and needs to be explored]  Therefore, the first decision you have to make is whether you want an enhancement of certain components with your wine and sushi pairing or if you want to add complexity to your experience.  Posting the common aroma descriptors of each varietal would make this post a bit lengthy, so I’ve simplified the concept in the chart at the end.

The second decision you have to make is how much of a wasabi kick you are looking to get.  If you’re eating sushi the “proper” way, you should only have a tiny dab with your bite (if any at all), but some people have been known to take a chunk just to get that brain burn feeling.  Again, a reminder that the wasabi you are having is really horseradish, mustard and food coloring and not actual wasabi, but the effect is generally the same.  One way to control the amount of kick is to simply control the amount of wasabi you are ingesting at a time.  However, one can neutralize some of the effects of the spiciness by taking a swig of wine that has some noticeable acid in it.  This is nice for those who are not so daring to swallow a chunk of wasabi outright, but might enjoy the pepperiness that it brings.  The exact proportions will differ by person, but it’s certain that if you take a lot of wasabi in at once, no amount of acid will diffuse that shooting burn you’ll get through your brain.  It’s the in between area that there is room to play.  On the flip side of that, if you have a wine with more pronounced alcohol content, that kick may be heightened depending on your level of sensitivity.  The more tolerant taster who doesn’t noticed higher alcohol content in wines as much (as a burning sensation in the back of your throat near the nasal cavity) may be more tolerant of spicy foods to begin with.  The more sensitive taster should take note though.  For those who like to live on the edge, take something 100 proof alongside a big chunk of wasabi.  I’m sure it will be a trip you won’t forget.  If anyone wants to create a shot based on that, all I ask is that you send a small portion of the revenue from all of your “I survived….” merchandise my way.

Last, we consider the tannin factor.  That cotton feeling you get wrapping around your tongue generally with red wines.  This was a big point of contention on the internet as the red wine purists couldn’t understand why their tannins had disappeared and the rest of the people didn’t want them there in the first place.  But are we just restricted to white wines or red wines sans tannins when eating sushi? No! You can have the wine you want with the experience you want, but you may need to take steps to get it that way.  Let’s remember that the sensation of tannin decreases significantly when you add in citric acid, vinegar or salt.  We can get citric acid from a lemon slice, vinegar from pickled ginger and salt from soy sauce while we’re eating sushi.  Use these as your tools.  You want all the tannin goodness your favorite wine can provide?  Stay away from dunking your bite of sushi into soy sauce; forgo the slice of pickled ginger in between bites.  Your tannins will be there every step of the way.  What’s that? You inconsiderately ordered a bottle of tannic red wine without asking the people you are with what they want and they don’t want any tannin at all?  Well they’ll be resigned to getting a bit more soy sauce on each bite than they’re used to; having a slice of pickled ginger in between bites; or maybe just squeezing a bit of lemon over everything.  The moderates can find their ideal balance somewhere in between with a little trial and error using the tools available.

Now, I wouldn’t have gone through all this work without trying these theories out on unknowing participants.  That’s not my style.  An event was put together with 15 people to verify the effects of these interactions with 4 different wines and an assorted collection of sushi.  Was it scientific? Not remotely.  Did it successfully verify that people who just like wine and also like sushi can use this information to identify what wines they like best with sushi? Absolutely. We used all of the common ingredients found in sushi restaurants in Minneapolis and tasted four wines throughout the night: Grüner Veltliner, Viognier, Carmenere, Shiraz.  Keeping in mind that the impression my internet searching left me with was that people shied away from reds when eating sushi, it was a fun surprise to discover that with the tools I had given the group, the overall favorite pairing was the Shiraz.

The key, as with just about everything, is balance.  More importantly, it’s knowing what you are balancing.  Three questions need to be asked when you sit down to sushi and you’re deciding what wine you want.

  1. How much wasabi kick do I want?
  2. How much tannin do I want to be noticeable?
  3. Do I want flavor enhancement or flavor complexity?

Charts!

Add acid to manage excessive wasabi kick

Alcohol will increase the wasabi kick moderately

Finally, here is the chart that was given to the willing subjects.  The wines listed are all of those available at the various sushi restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Notice how it guides you toward achieving balance through trade offs.  Happy pairing!

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Oxygen, Aromatics, and Hyper-decanting. Oh My!

Posted in Education, Fun Facts, Pinot Noir, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

Oxygen.  We keep it out as much as possible when making the wine and then we add as much as we can in when drinking it.  We swirl.  We decant.  We aerate.  Adding oxygen into the wine right before we drink it is such a thing that a good portion of the wine accessories business is devoted to it.  But why?  What does mere oxygen do that improves the experience?

The theory (which has a bit of science backing it up) is that when oxygen hits the wine, the aromatics (esters, terpenols, etc.)  that have been tightly bottled up are encouraged to be released.  As more aromatics are released the wine should be more intense on the nose and then more balanced and apparent on the palate as well.  However, a wine has a finite amount of aromatics so there should also be a point of diminishing returns.  How far along the curve (the wine’s lifespan) the wine is generally referred to as the wine’s maturity, so I’ll call this the point of diminishing maturity.  Please feel free to use that term when referring to people as well.

winearomaticsexperiencechart-0012

There are a few other factors that go into why the quality of experience in wine starts to decline at a certain point, but here we are focusing on you enjoying your glass of wine at the table which is mostly concerned with the oxygen interaction (and serving temperature).  To test this theory, I decided to put together a little trial using a bottle of Philippe Leclerc’s 1996 Chambolle-Musigny Les Babillaires.  That’s a Pinot Noir from Burgundy for those who haven’t memorized every appellation in France.

The question: Does increasing the amount of oxygen in the wine right before you drink it intensify the aromatics on the nose and also have a positive effect on the intensity, balance and finish of the wine on the palate as well?  Given the existing, although limited studies on this already, one would hypothesize that the answer to this question is certainly yes.  I was also attempting to answer this question because I generally despise wine accessories.  For me, all I need is a double-hinged waiter’s corkscrew and a glass.  Also, I really like swirling the wine in the glass and I needed justification to continue doing it.  With this question I am assuming the wine is going to be served at the proper temperature.  The colder a wine is, the less oxygen can work its magic on it, which is generally why we serve white wines at a colder temperature and reds at a comparatively warmer temperature.

Mwhahahahaha!

The methods:  Three different applications of oxygen to the wine were tested in this double-blind controlled study.  First, 250ml of the wine was poured into a measuring cup and then split between two wine glasses (the control of pouring directly from the bottle).  The second was 250ml of the wine poured into a measuring cup and then a 9″ x 11″ glass pan to expose as much of the surface of that wine to oxygen as possible. Third, 250ml of the wine was poured into the measuring cup and then a glass blender which was put on a low setting (such as “frappé”) for 30 seconds.

The pan

The second and third methods were then poured into respective glasses just as the first.  Each glass was labeled on the bottom (hidden) with the number of the method (1-3) for a total of 6 glasses, 2 for each method.  At this point I asked my paid assistant (paid in wine!) to leave the room and I rearranged the order of the glasses within each set.  After that, my assistant rearranged the glasses again while I stepped out so neither of us knew which order the wines were in, but we knew we each had one of each method.

Why the chosen methods?  Because I’m a huge nerd.  The first method acts as a control since it’s typically how people open and serve wine.  The added step of putting it into a glass measuring cup first was added to maintain consistency for the other methods.  Also, in the interest of consistency, if a glass was swirled, the other two glasses were swirled as well.  The second method is meant to mimic putting wine into a decanter.  I have two decanters, but by spreading the wine out on a flat surface as thinly as possible, the hypothesis that more oxygen on the wine increase aromatics is better tested.  The third method, the blender or Hyper-decanting as it is called, was popularized by Nathan Myhrvold the former Microsoft CTO that got bored one day and created a cookbook that focused on how to cook instead of what to cook (and it’s really cool).  The idea behind hyper-decanting is that it “chops” oxygen into the wine, moving oxygen through the wine instead of the normal lazy interaction oxygen has with the wine when it just sits there.  If you need a visualization, picture those movies that show an old school dance where the boys and girls sit on separate sides of the room and maybe one or two of them are dancing together.  That’s the normal wine and oxygen interaction.  Hyper-decanting is when the adult steps in a forces everyone to find a partner.  Also, the punch gets spiked.  Hijinks follow.

The rating:  This was a comparative analysis.  Therefore, each glass was analyzed briefly first and then a second analysis would be conducted and rated.  This ensured that if a glass was rated as having the highest level of intensity in the nose and the next glass was found to be more intense, chaos and anarchy would not ensue.  For the nose, Intensity was scored on a 1 – 5 scale with 5 being the most intense.  A Differing Notes commenting field was also included for more qualitative aspects.  For the palate, a 1-5 Intensity scale was also used along with a 1-3 Balance scale, a 1-5 Finish scale and a Differing Notes commented field as well.  In retrospect, the scales could have all been 1-3 since there were three glasses and this was comparative, but that didn’t affect the outcome and it did make the scorecards seem a lot more sciencey.

The results:  The assessments completed by my paid assistant and myself were nearly identical even though they were completed in silence.  The hypothesis that the more oxygen that gets added to the wine just before experiencing it was indeed correct, but with one twist.  The first method of direct pour produced a glass of wine where the experience was less intense and the characteristics of the wine tended to be more to the earthy spectrum while the fruits were more hidden.  The second method was more intense, but specifically with the fruit.  In this case, tart cherry came through and the tannins were more apparent.  The balance had gone a bit haywire.  The third method, which reigned supreme, boosted the intensity all around and the more earthy tones came back in to the picture to balance out the fruit.  The tannins then felt more appropriate and the finish appeared to linger just a bit longer which was most likely because of the improvement in balance and intensity.  As an added bonus, I guessed which glasses contained which methods correctly before the number labels were retrieved!

The conclusion: The wine that was tested was probably just past its prime (past the point of diminishing maturity).  Therefore, the results may change a little with the use of a young wine or an older wine in its prime, but I doubt the changes will be significant.  I can confidently state that forcing oxygen into the wine will noticeably improve the experience of a glass of wine.  However, it does appear that merely letting oxygen sit on top of the wine does not improve the experience and may even detract from it.  It may be related to headspace above the wine as Ron Jackson points out in his Wine Science textbook, pg. 503:

When the bottle is opened, aromatics in the headspace escape from the bottle.  The changed equilibrium between aromatics in the wine and the headspace induces further liberation of aromatics.  This phenomenon helps maintain the aroma in the glass during tasting, but may depauperate the fragrance of wine left in the bottle.  

If we arrange the methods in order of amount of headspace, it would be wine in the glass, wine in the blender and then wine in the pan.  It should be noted that a typical decanter does not have the same amount of headspace that wine in a pan does.  Perhaps, given the vast amount of headspace, the wine decanted into the pan went past its optimal point of maturity as was noted by the lack of bouquet or earthy tones to support the fruit tones.  Depauperate indeed.

Additional studies should be made (by me or at least invite me over if you’d like to do them) to compare all of those wine accessories and how well they actually affect the experience.  My guess is that you could get the better results from your blender than shelling out extra dough this holiday season for a fancy, single-purpose tool though.  Last, I do have to end this with addressing those who view wine as a fragile and ethereal object that should only be treated with kisses and caresses: Get over it.

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Screw Cap Vs. Cork: Let’s Settle This.

Posted in Fun Facts, tagged , , , , on June 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

This may be one of my shortest posts, ever.  The evidence is in.  Which makes a better wine bottle closure: the screw cap or the cork?  According to Ron Jackson and his remarkable Wine Science text book, it really doesn’t matter.  Cork is used primarily because of tradition, not because it makes the wine age better or any other hullabaloo.  This has been verified by countless other people who actually spend time scientifically measuring this sort of thing.

Got it?

IT’S SCIENCE!!!!!!!

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