June 24, 2010 • 24 mins
Is the sense of taste subjective? Why are some wines bad news for people with particular allergies? If you're anxious for the answers, never fear: In this episode, Allison and Robert take a look at science and wine.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
It's also not don'tolk the science editor how stuff works
dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer at
how stuff works dot com. And this week we're talking
(00:24):
about wine and uh well, wine and science. So first
of all, we need a stress that kids don't go
drinking glass of wine while you listen to this podcast. Yeah,
don't let this inspire you because trust me, you're not
gonna like what it tastes like anyway when you're old
enough to drink it. So yeah, later it's gonna take
a while, so don't rush it. So yeah, we're there's
all there are. How stuff works dot com has a
(00:46):
lot of really cool articles about how wine is made,
about some of the possible health benefits of drinking, like
a glass of red wine a day, how to make
your own wine, et cetera. But we're not really going
to get into all that. If if you want that,
hit the site because we've got it. The guy covered. Um,
what we're going to talk about are a few cases
where science and wine sort of you know, hang out
(01:07):
together and uh and and conduct some really cool experiments
or if some or and also in some cases some
really interesting chance encounters between the world of science and
the world of wine. And a friendly used to live
in Atlanta who was a microbiologist, and he went out
to California with his wife and wound up working as
a microbiologist out there for one of the vineyards. Yeah,
(01:28):
I mean there's a real chemistry to it. Um. I
don't know anybody that um it's like that heavy into
the science of it, that specific area of the science
of it. Um. I have a friend who's a dietitian,
and she when she talks about wine, she definitely has
a diet dietitian's stance on it. And then I have
another friend who's who like took courses in like you know,
the Hawaiian is made in the different regions, and and
(01:49):
she's you know, she advises people on you know, which
one to to get in, which you know to pair
with which cheese, et cetera. So do you think you
have a good palate? I really, I like in a lot,
but I'm not like super you know, I don't have
this amazing po I'm not a super taster or anything. No, No,
I don't think I'm a super taste either. I think
(02:10):
as some of my in laws might be super tasters.
They seem to have amazing palettes and they can discern
all these amazing tones and flavors and all sorts of
things in wine that I can never detect. Yeah, I
tend to like choose bottles based on what kind of
animals on the label or what price tag they have.
That also helps a lot. Yeah, but but no, I
like a good one. But I'd tell you who else
(02:32):
liked a good wine. Frederic Brochet cognitive neuroscientists at the
University of Bordeaux in France. What's what did you do? Well?
This is this is pretty awesome. Um he uh. He
decided he was going to have some wine specialists he
knew over for a tasting, fifty four of them. In fact,
that's a lot of wine knowledge in one room. Yeah,
(02:53):
and Brochet himself is is quite the wine enthusiast as well.
So you know this guy invite you over and for
a tasting, You're like, all right, you know he knows
his stuff, let's do it. So what happens tasting? Well,
he decided that he was going to uh to first
give them a pair of a pair of wines red
and white taste, um, which they did, and they all
(03:14):
they all made their notes on the on the wine
and everybody. And if you provided them with spittoons, probably yeah,
they're all about the other. You spit it out and
then you cleanse your palate and all that, and you know,
switch around some some water, um, and then you describe
it in all of this rather elegant language, which I
imagine a number of people have heard before. Um. We
(03:36):
have a whole list of of these that came from
the study that Brochet later published. But I mean, I
love how there are things like you talk about the
like raspberry tones and uh, you talk about you know,
the distinct lemon, honey straw floral tastes and the wine
those would be whites primarily. Yeah, and then you get
into the reds and I heard one person describe it
(03:58):
as a leather leather. I thought that was fairly interesting.
And then they're you know, plumb, final, dark, intense, deep
in all those sorts of things. My wife has a
theory that the the more um advanced, the the wine
condoseur or or or wine snob if you want to
be judgmental, Um, the more advanced your knowledge of wine,
the crazier and kind of disgusting your terminology will be
(04:21):
for even a good wine. So you might be like, hmmm,
I detect the hint of dog some light takeion notes,
you know, it'll be stuff that like that. What does
that even mean? Tachy on that's a sub atomic particle.
How does the wine taste like that? But but yes,
so everybody knows the kind of language we're talking about,
so they would. They tasted the red and the white,
and they made all these complicated, uh, you know, descriptions,
and you know, and some of the additives are very
(04:43):
much white wine describers and others are red wine describers. Okay,
so you know everybody ha ha ha tries the wine,
comments on it, puts down their notes. Then he brings
out a second pair of wine again, a red and
a white. Everybody does the same thing. You know, they
taste them, they put down their comments on it, and
(05:03):
they make their notes. You know that in white language
for the white wine, red language for the red wine.
But then the big reveal, the second couple of wines
are both the same white wine. He just put red
food coloring, so flavorless red food coloring into one of
the whites. Kidding. Yeah. And the thing is nobody figured
(05:23):
it out, like nobody, not a single person. And these
are all specialists. Not a single one said, hey, I
think these are the same. This is the same wine,
and you just put food coloring in one of them. Like,
no one even said, hey, these are very similar that
they they used to distinct language to describe the red
and the white. All right, So if apartually wasn't done,
that's right, he threw another wine party. He must have
(05:45):
had to invite a whole different set of specialists. I
can't imagine the same set of specialists would come back
after reveal, it seems, or if they would, they would
be very suspicious, like, all right, what's this wine? What
you do is the soda water experiment? Yeah, which actually
he kind of did some things similar to that, because
he what he did is he told everybody beforehand that
(06:06):
he was going to serve a common table wine and
a premium vintage. Alright, something fancy, you know. Um. So
he he, he starts off, He makes a show of
tasting each of them, and he responds in a predictable manner.
You know, he you know, he tastes the table wine,
he's like, oh, you know, it's table wine. Al right,
it was, you know, pretty good. Fits it out, and
then he, you know, and then he tastes the vintage
and he you know, he sort of waxes poetic about
(06:28):
how how nice the premium vantage, right, yeah, yeah, the
premium advantage. Um so, And then everybody else tries it
as well, and of course they have they do the
same thing. You know, Okay, you know that this is
the premium vantage, is this, this and that and the
you know, the how the the table wine is oh,
you know, it's it's it's alright, it's table wine. It's
pretty good. But they don't there's no comparison except they're
(06:50):
the same common like Bordeaux wine. Oh yeah, there is
no premium vantage. It's just a very basic wine. And again,
no one picked up on No one picked up on it. Yeah,
so what's the lesson here? It seems that taste is
more than what's on your tongue. It's a combination of
all the senses, especially what you're seeing and what you're perceiving.
(07:10):
Is that what Prochet was trying to get at. Yeah,
and you know, he's not just being a jerk, you know,
because he's very adamant in the paper that he you know,
he he likes wine, and that this is actually the
benefit of people who are in the tasting wine and
talking about it. It's like, we don't just taste, um,
you know, a glass of Pinot grigio. You know, we're
we're looking at it. We're um, we're smelling it, and
(07:34):
we're bringing in all these preconceptions based on what someone
just told us about it, what the label looks like, Um,
you know, how much you paid for it. Uh, you know,
all these different things end up affecting our experience with
the wine. Didn't Prochet also predict that the more honed
a palette um the wine specialists have, the more likely
(07:54):
they were to fall for this trick, the red dot
trick at least. Yeah, yeah, they they're the more the
more into wine you are, and the more of a
specialist you are, the more likely are to fall for
the red dye and the white wine. Uh experiment. So
this made me think of have you ever heard of
bartenders using like top shelf liquors, or at least the
bottles of top shelf flickers and filling them with the
(08:16):
cheap stuff and then serving them to people. Yeah, yeah,
I've I've heard about that. Yeah, I don't know if
I would pick up the difference. Do you think you would?
Probably not? Say, if somebody was giving you pop Off
versus Kettle one vodka, do you think you would pick
up on it? Probably not, I'm because I mean one thing,
if you're having like an Opinia colote or something, I mean,
it's what what You're probably not going to notice. But
(08:38):
what about something like a martini or can I don't
know if I would because I'm just not I don't
have mixed drinks that often, but I can definitely see
for somebody especially it was like say a sipping like
vodka or a sipping tequila or something, right, I think
it would be harder and if it were served neat
as opposed to with ice. Yeah. Now, if you just
it was like Irish car bombs, I thout anybody's gonna notice. Um.
(09:00):
But that that actually brings up another point. There's a
friend of mine who's um graphic design person, and she
has this theory that you could make money selling like
fake fancy labels that that slide over your bottles of
two buck chuck absolutely, and uh, and so you can
just you know, you got to the stories, spend two
bucks on a bottle of wine, but then you put
(09:21):
the fancy label on it and everybody's cool with it,
or you bring it as a gift, to bring a gift,
and science backs this up as a solid plan. So
let's move on to our next intersection of science and
wine are more accurately medicine in wine in this case, Yeah, yeah,
we have actually yeah, we have a flight of two
wines here to present to everyone. And the first one
is h well, I don't want to spoil anything, so
(09:43):
I guess I'll kind of set it up with the story.
Right where are we? Um? So two thousand seven, we're
in Spain, right, and what starts happening is there are
wine drinkers and they're winding up in the hospital and
they're having severe allergic reactions. In fact, I think one
of the five people that shows at the hospital is anaphylactic. So, uh,
this person is going to die from constricted airways if
(10:05):
they don't get medical help. Yeah. So this is not
just oh my face turn red because I had wine.
This is I'm in the hospital and I'm in some
serious pain. Right, So the doctors conducted a couple of
tests and it eventually ruled out all the likely suspects.
And these were all wine drinkers. We should mention that's
a very important detail. Um. So, the doctors conducted tests
and they were trying to figure out what was what.
(10:27):
So there are a couple of likely suspects, maybe like
egg way, which is sometimes given to wine to clarify
it and reduced harshness. But when the doctors started scrutinizing
the patient's blood, they found antibodies that suggested a recent
beer wasp sting. Except none of these people have been
stung recently by a wasp or b. All they've been
doing was checking down wine. Yeah, so they you know,
(10:48):
they started investigating and what they what they came up
with is that everybody, everybody knows the one step in
the process of wine making, you know, even if you
don't know all the chemical stuff. You know, like people
with their bare feet squashing grapes or a machine squashing
grapes up. Well, what if there's something crawling on the grapes, right,
what if you have yellow jackets which happened to like
(11:12):
ripe fruit like grapes but you know, I think everybody
knows these guys from picnics. They love picnics, and apparently
they love grapes. So what was happening is yellow jackets
were getting smashed up with the grapes, and you were
getting wasp venom in the wine. And then when when
these people drank it, they had an allergic reaction to
that venom. So this would probably be more of a
(11:35):
problem in a wine that hadn't been allowed to age then, right, Yeah,
they found that older wines were safe because even if
there's venom in there, the venom will have had time
to just to grade and lose its potency um. And
they said it's probably would be good with even just
a couple of weeks of aging. So something like a Beaujolais.
Aren't those very new? And don't you drink them very
(11:57):
quickly after they're produced? I think I've heard that. Yeah,
so yeah, that would if you had a wine it
was really fresh, like made yesterday. Uh, this would not
be a wine to drink if you had, you know,
some sort of like severe allergic reaction to say, wasp stings.
This is really interesting. My mother in law actually has
an allergy to um be stings. She always forgets to
(12:18):
carry eppiepen around with her. It makes me a little nervous.
So I guess that means that we can only drink
the really good stuff with her, the really good old
stuff of her nine good stuff. Um. So, our next
wine in our little flight of wines for this tasting
is a Chinese super wine, most excellent. What does it
(12:39):
do for you? Well, here's the deal, all right. So
everybody's read like we were talking about earlier, these articles
about hey, red wine is good for you, all these studies.
You know, red wine is good for you because of this.
It'll um um, you know, it'll it'll make it'll keep
you younger, it will make you live longer, it'll fight
cancer or heart disease or you know, you name it.
There's a lot of It boils down to the antioxidants,
(13:00):
right right, So the anti accidents and red wines are
called polyphenols, and the ideas that they're thought to protect
the lining of blood vessels in your heart according to
the MAO Clinic. And then there are these two main
types of antioxidants, so the flavonoids like flavor flavor and
non flavonoids and there's one non flavonoid that you guys
have heard a lot about, I'm betting, called raspy tal. Yeah,
(13:23):
you can butt and supplement front form, right, you can,
although you can't internationally. I think you can buy it
in the States. I don't know if the FDA is
regulated it yet or what. Yes, some of the stuff
is is weird, like you can get melotone in here
just over the counter, but I think it's more control
and like the UK. So, raspital is a compound found
naturally in grapeskins, and there have been various studies conducted
(13:45):
on it, and some of them have found that high
doses can improve muscle endurance and mice and also that
the compound keeps them slim. And of course again we'll
stress that the wine skins, uh, those end up more
in the process for red wine that's white. Red wine
is red and white wine is white. Right. So, other
(14:06):
studies have linked respiratual to improving longevity, and then of
course you have the people who say it doesn't but
it improves your overall health. Yeah, there's just seems like
for a while there's like a study every week somebody
else was hitting it and It's understandable because there's a
lot of money to be made and things like staying
young and living forever, indeed immortality. So it's been quite
(14:27):
the fat Yeah, to say nothing of, um, you know,
some sort of health reason to drink that glass of
wine every evening. So as if you needed an excuse, yeah,
you gotta say, I'm probably staying young. So if for
spiritual is really great for us, then why not make
this super wine that has a lot of it in
it and make a profit from it? Yeah, exactly. So
what's going on in China? Is that what they're after? Um,
(14:49):
well sort of, it's Um, there's some researchers at China's
Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, and they've been working to
produced a genetically modified grapevine. Okay, so what they're doing
is they're throwing in a gene variant from a particular
wild Chinese vine that increases rez virtral production. Um, they're
but they're they're not doing this specifically with the idea of, hey,
(15:11):
we will make some crazy wine that will make people
think they're gonna live forever. No, because it turns out
red virtral also works as an effective anti fungal agent
in the plant, protecting it, you know, from from fungus.
So that's really what they're going after with this. But
that's that's not what was necessarily picked up on by
by various media outlets, you know, because any fungal wine
(15:33):
and any fungal grapes and I may not read that,
but not a sexy but super Chinese wine that could
make me not age, you know. That sounds great, I'll
click on that. So what about robots and wine? What's
going on there? Oh? Well? Um, on one level, you
have the I think a number of people may have
seen this and actually did a blog entry about this
like a year ago. Um, and it's kind of old news.
(15:54):
But the Samoier robot from Japan's ANYC System Technologies, Um,
this is like, you know, and like all Japanese robots,
it's this cute little guy that you know, it was
kind of like a little like pudgy dwarf or something.
But it looks like he just came round of an anime,
you know. And but he can identify wines with an
(16:14):
infrared scanner and give food pairing recommendations. You can also
taste leftovers and tell you what they are, And can
we just stop right there? Why why is he tasting leftovers?
Why don't you know what the leftovers are in your fridge?
I mean, do you need a robot to tell you
what your leftovers are in your fridge? I thinst so unrecognizable?
And if if they're so unrecognizable in your fridge, then
(16:35):
perhaps you should just throw them away. Well, if you
start asking do we need a robot to do this,
that or the other, then I mean you're gonna end up.
I mean that crosses out most of the robotic stuff
that's going on in Japan. Well, this particular Summilier robot
identified human flesh as bacon, So it seems like there
are a few flaws to be worked out. Maybe I
don't know, maybe human flesh taste like bacon. I think
(16:56):
I've heard that before. Really, yeah, so maybe the robots
correct I suppose. Well, we have another pretty cool story
about one robots, and this one was detailed and Astrobiology magazine. Yeah,
this one is a pretty cool story. Um. It centers around, uh, basically,
a couple of years ago centers around this. Uh. You
see Berkeley chemistry professor by the name of Richard Matthews
(17:20):
all right, and uh. During the day, he was working
on a prototype for the Mars Organic Analyzer or MOA. Uh,
and this is the most sophisticated life detection instrument ever
to be sent to the Red planet and will be
going to So that's his day job. At night, like
a lot of us, who likes to come home, you know,
(17:40):
we sit on his porch, You have a little dinner,
have little red wine, and then go to sleep and
then wake up at like three thirty am, like hot,
flustered with a racing heart and uh, you know, has
to get out of bed and somehow call himself back downs.
We shouldn't going through menopause. What was going on? Um No,
But what was happening was something called tyramine. Okay, tyramine
(18:07):
the modified amino acid that sets off a chemical reaction
that causes the body to produce adrenaline. I mean, that
would be it. And it's common in a lot of
foods that are made with bacterial fermentation. So you're pungent cheeses, age, meats,
you know, all the good stuff. Yeah, so you know
he was probably was a little bummed out about this.
Professor Matthews had this idea. He wanted to know what
(18:29):
produces it, and then wham, he realized, well, what do
you know, he can marry his nighttime wine drinking with
his daytime job because he spent a decade of his
life in fact, building a machine that can analyze organic compounds. Yeah,
the most advanced one on the planet, you know. Yeah,
so that's pretty sweet to have that at your at
your disposal. Yeah. So what he did is he got
in touch with the local wine cellar and they started
(18:51):
running wines through this device. And the the original the
article which you can you can look up. It's online, um,
and we'll probably link to it on the blogs when
we sure well yeah, uh, there's a real detailed description
of how this device works. Um, And it's really detailed,
so we'll just trust trust is it works. That involves
lasers and uh and um and like tagging the molecules
(19:14):
and then analyzing them. And it's far more advanced than
anything that like the Viking. Um, you know Rover's head
on Mars in the past. But anyway, so he goes
the winery, they start running wine through it, and not
just the finished product, but like wine from every step
of the fermentation process. To figure out, you know, when
when the tyraman is coming into play, and uh, they
(19:36):
ended up keying in on the secondary fermentation process, also
known as the malolactic formation, where malik acid converts into
lactic acid um. And this is like malik is typically
in the fruits and it can be a bit bitter,
so lactic acid softens the taste. Right, So this is
(19:56):
the process that fills the wine with not only tira means,
but also histamines which cause allertic reactions, right, anti histamines. Sure. Yeah,
the research is still continuing, um, and they're looking at
like which which wines are more likely to contain tiramine
and which even which wineries are more likely to produce it.
But there's actually really even more incredible possible future for
(20:20):
this technology, right. You could see it being deployed on
a much grander scale. I mean, there's so many food
allergies and we're so hypper aware of what we're eating
these days, and peanuts have made the headlines numerous times.
You could see apparent wielding you know, handheld device like
this and analyzing sample of that airplane food to see
if it had peanuts in it or whatever your allergy
(20:40):
was Yeah. Matthews even predicts that this technology could be
incorporated into um like other food related gadgets, like it
could be part of a food processor or or something
even like in refrigeration, where you wouldn't have to look
in the refrigerator and and be like, mmmmm, I wonder
if the tuna fish is going to kill me today,
because the refrigerator will tell you, hey, dude, don't eat
that tuna fish because it will kill you. You You know
(21:02):
that kind of thing. So it's pretty pretty amazing. Yeah,
I would totally be your call if you disobeyed the device,
which I would be likely to do. I hate to
see food go to waste. I thought you'd like, you
hate to be bossed around by refrigerators to close the door.
I don't want to close the door. So there you
have it. There's some some science and wine UM. So
(21:24):
if you're of legal age and in the next time
you partake of of a fine vintage, I hope you
think of us. So, hey, we got a little reader
mail by the way, Oh why didn't you eat it?
We recently heard from Shantal from Australia and she had
a couple of things to correct us on. First, in
(21:46):
the Venom podcast. Uh, we were talking about a gusset
um which and it turns out this is a part
of the pantyhose and it's not a specifically an Australian thing. Okay,
so good, good to know on that part. Also, she
wanted to clarify we were kind of having a little
fun with Australia and it's many venomous things and talking
(22:09):
about people having to wear pantyhose everywhere to keep from
being killed by horrible, horrible lives. She set a straight
on the difference between panty house and stockings, which I
was not aware of. I think I used the terms
interchangeably until now, but now I will not. Yeah, I
was not aware either. But she also points out and
should I do that Australian accident? No, I don't think so.
I think I think no Australian accent um, she says.
(22:31):
By the way, we don't live in caves. We all
have electricity, and none of us ride kangaroos to work
each day. Good. You know, the spider and venomous creatures
are only found out in the wild, and our National
geographic shows our cities and towns are much the same
as those in the USA, just with less junk food outlets.
Good to know. I still want to visit badly. Yeah, yeah,
(22:52):
I'd like to get down there. So if you want
to tell us what's on your mind, whether it's about
Australia wine or anything else and Usnina signed stuff that
has to firk start come yeah and check out the blogs.
We have a lot of cool blog entries. The fact
we have one that did recently about like what is
the coldest wine can get? And where where's the coldest
place in the universe you could possibly drink? It? Sounds good? Yeah,
(23:14):
it's pretty funn have to read it over a glass
of one. Yeah. Oh, and we have a Twitter and
a Facebook. We do, yeah, so check that out. We're
lab stuff on Twitter and you can also just do
a search for lab stuff on on Facebook as well.
We're Google. Yeah. All right, that's all we have. Thanks
for listening, guys for more on this and thousands of
(23:41):
other topics because at how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
It's also not don'tolk the science editor how stuff works
dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer at
how stuff works dot com. And this week we're talking
(00:24):
about wine and uh well, wine and science. So first
of all, we need a stress that kids don't go
drinking glass of wine while you listen to this podcast. Yeah,
don't let this inspire you because trust me, you're not
gonna like what it tastes like anyway when you're old
enough to drink it. So yeah, later it's gonna take
a while, so don't rush it. So yeah, we're there's
all there are. How stuff works dot com has a
(00:46):
lot of really cool articles about how wine is made,
about some of the possible health benefits of drinking, like
a glass of red wine a day, how to make
your own wine, et cetera. But we're not really going
to get into all that. If if you want that,
hit the site because we've got it. The guy covered. Um,
what we're going to talk about are a few cases
where science and wine sort of you know, hang out
(01:07):
together and uh and and conduct some really cool experiments
or if some or and also in some cases some
really interesting chance encounters between the world of science and
the world of wine. And a friendly used to live
in Atlanta who was a microbiologist, and he went out
to California with his wife and wound up working as
a microbiologist out there for one of the vineyards. Yeah,
(01:28):
I mean there's a real chemistry to it. Um. I
don't know anybody that um it's like that heavy into
the science of it, that specific area of the science
of it. Um. I have a friend who's a dietitian,
and she when she talks about wine, she definitely has
a diet dietitian's stance on it. And then I have
another friend who's who like took courses in like you know,
the Hawaiian is made in the different regions, and and
(01:49):
she's you know, she advises people on you know, which
one to to get in, which you know to pair
with which cheese, et cetera. So do you think you
have a good palate? I really, I like in a lot,
but I'm not like super you know, I don't have
this amazing po I'm not a super taster or anything. No, No,
I don't think I'm a super taste either. I think
(02:10):
as some of my in laws might be super tasters.
They seem to have amazing palettes and they can discern
all these amazing tones and flavors and all sorts of
things in wine that I can never detect. Yeah, I
tend to like choose bottles based on what kind of
animals on the label or what price tag they have.
That also helps a lot. Yeah, but but no, I
like a good one. But I'd tell you who else
(02:32):
liked a good wine. Frederic Brochet cognitive neuroscientists at the
University of Bordeaux in France. What's what did you do? Well?
This is this is pretty awesome. Um he uh. He
decided he was going to have some wine specialists he
knew over for a tasting, fifty four of them. In fact,
that's a lot of wine knowledge in one room. Yeah,
(02:53):
and Brochet himself is is quite the wine enthusiast as well.
So you know this guy invite you over and for
a tasting, You're like, all right, you know he knows
his stuff, let's do it. So what happens tasting? Well,
he decided that he was going to uh to first
give them a pair of a pair of wines red
and white taste, um, which they did, and they all
(03:14):
they all made their notes on the on the wine
and everybody. And if you provided them with spittoons, probably yeah,
they're all about the other. You spit it out and
then you cleanse your palate and all that, and you know,
switch around some some water, um, and then you describe
it in all of this rather elegant language, which I
imagine a number of people have heard before. Um. We
(03:36):
have a whole list of of these that came from
the study that Brochet later published. But I mean, I
love how there are things like you talk about the
like raspberry tones and uh, you talk about you know,
the distinct lemon, honey straw floral tastes and the wine
those would be whites primarily. Yeah, and then you get
into the reds and I heard one person describe it
(03:58):
as a leather leather. I thought that was fairly interesting.
And then they're you know, plumb, final, dark, intense, deep
in all those sorts of things. My wife has a
theory that the the more um advanced, the the wine
condoseur or or or wine snob if you want to
be judgmental, Um, the more advanced your knowledge of wine,
the crazier and kind of disgusting your terminology will be
(04:21):
for even a good wine. So you might be like, hmmm,
I detect the hint of dog some light takeion notes,
you know, it'll be stuff that like that. What does
that even mean? Tachy on that's a sub atomic particle.
How does the wine taste like that? But but yes,
so everybody knows the kind of language we're talking about,
so they would. They tasted the red and the white,
and they made all these complicated, uh, you know, descriptions,
and you know, and some of the additives are very
(04:43):
much white wine describers and others are red wine describers. Okay,
so you know everybody ha ha ha tries the wine,
comments on it, puts down their notes. Then he brings
out a second pair of wine again, a red and
a white. Everybody does the same thing. You know, they
taste them, they put down their comments on it, and
(05:03):
they make their notes. You know that in white language
for the white wine, red language for the red wine.
But then the big reveal, the second couple of wines
are both the same white wine. He just put red
food coloring, so flavorless red food coloring into one of
the whites. Kidding. Yeah. And the thing is nobody figured
(05:23):
it out, like nobody, not a single person. And these
are all specialists. Not a single one said, hey, I
think these are the same. This is the same wine,
and you just put food coloring in one of them. Like,
no one even said, hey, these are very similar that
they they used to distinct language to describe the red
and the white. All right, So if apartually wasn't done,
that's right, he threw another wine party. He must have
(05:45):
had to invite a whole different set of specialists. I
can't imagine the same set of specialists would come back
after reveal, it seems, or if they would, they would
be very suspicious, like, all right, what's this wine? What
you do is the soda water experiment? Yeah, which actually
he kind of did some things similar to that, because
he what he did is he told everybody beforehand that
(06:06):
he was going to serve a common table wine and
a premium vintage. Alright, something fancy, you know. Um. So
he he, he starts off, He makes a show of
tasting each of them, and he responds in a predictable manner.
You know, he you know, he tastes the table wine,
he's like, oh, you know, it's table wine. Al right,
it was, you know, pretty good. Fits it out, and
then he, you know, and then he tastes the vintage
and he you know, he sort of waxes poetic about
(06:28):
how how nice the premium vantage, right, yeah, yeah, the
premium advantage. Um so, And then everybody else tries it
as well, and of course they have they do the
same thing. You know, Okay, you know that this is
the premium vantage, is this, this and that and the
you know, the how the the table wine is oh,
you know, it's it's it's alright, it's table wine. It's
pretty good. But they don't there's no comparison except they're
(06:50):
the same common like Bordeaux wine. Oh yeah, there is
no premium vantage. It's just a very basic wine. And again,
no one picked up on No one picked up on it. Yeah,
so what's the lesson here? It seems that taste is
more than what's on your tongue. It's a combination of
all the senses, especially what you're seeing and what you're perceiving.
(07:10):
Is that what Prochet was trying to get at. Yeah,
and you know, he's not just being a jerk, you know,
because he's very adamant in the paper that he you know,
he he likes wine, and that this is actually the
benefit of people who are in the tasting wine and
talking about it. It's like, we don't just taste, um,
you know, a glass of Pinot grigio. You know, we're
we're looking at it. We're um, we're smelling it, and
(07:34):
we're bringing in all these preconceptions based on what someone
just told us about it, what the label looks like, Um,
you know, how much you paid for it. Uh, you know,
all these different things end up affecting our experience with
the wine. Didn't Prochet also predict that the more honed
a palette um the wine specialists have, the more likely
(07:54):
they were to fall for this trick, the red dot
trick at least. Yeah, yeah, they they're the more the
more into wine you are, and the more of a
specialist you are, the more likely are to fall for
the red dye and the white wine. Uh experiment. So
this made me think of have you ever heard of
bartenders using like top shelf liquors, or at least the
bottles of top shelf flickers and filling them with the
(08:16):
cheap stuff and then serving them to people. Yeah, yeah,
I've I've heard about that. Yeah, I don't know if
I would pick up the difference. Do you think you would?
Probably not? Say, if somebody was giving you pop Off
versus Kettle one vodka, do you think you would pick
up on it? Probably not, I'm because I mean one thing,
if you're having like an Opinia colote or something, I mean,
it's what what You're probably not going to notice. But
(08:38):
what about something like a martini or can I don't
know if I would because I'm just not I don't
have mixed drinks that often, but I can definitely see
for somebody especially it was like say a sipping like
vodka or a sipping tequila or something, right, I think
it would be harder and if it were served neat
as opposed to with ice. Yeah. Now, if you just
it was like Irish car bombs, I thout anybody's gonna notice. Um.
(09:00):
But that that actually brings up another point. There's a
friend of mine who's um graphic design person, and she
has this theory that you could make money selling like
fake fancy labels that that slide over your bottles of
two buck chuck absolutely, and uh, and so you can
just you know, you got to the stories, spend two
bucks on a bottle of wine, but then you put
(09:21):
the fancy label on it and everybody's cool with it,
or you bring it as a gift, to bring a gift,
and science backs this up as a solid plan. So
let's move on to our next intersection of science and
wine are more accurately medicine in wine in this case, Yeah, yeah,
we have actually yeah, we have a flight of two
wines here to present to everyone. And the first one
is h well, I don't want to spoil anything, so
(09:43):
I guess I'll kind of set it up with the story.
Right where are we? Um? So two thousand seven, we're
in Spain, right, and what starts happening is there are
wine drinkers and they're winding up in the hospital and
they're having severe allergic reactions. In fact, I think one
of the five people that shows at the hospital is anaphylactic. So, uh,
this person is going to die from constricted airways if
(10:05):
they don't get medical help. Yeah. So this is not
just oh my face turn red because I had wine.
This is I'm in the hospital and I'm in some
serious pain. Right, So the doctors conducted a couple of
tests and it eventually ruled out all the likely suspects.
And these were all wine drinkers. We should mention that's
a very important detail. Um. So, the doctors conducted tests
and they were trying to figure out what was what.
(10:27):
So there are a couple of likely suspects, maybe like
egg way, which is sometimes given to wine to clarify
it and reduced harshness. But when the doctors started scrutinizing
the patient's blood, they found antibodies that suggested a recent
beer wasp sting. Except none of these people have been
stung recently by a wasp or b. All they've been
doing was checking down wine. Yeah, so they you know,
(10:48):
they started investigating and what they what they came up
with is that everybody, everybody knows the one step in
the process of wine making, you know, even if you
don't know all the chemical stuff. You know, like people
with their bare feet squashing grapes or a machine squashing
grapes up. Well, what if there's something crawling on the grapes, right,
what if you have yellow jackets which happened to like
(11:12):
ripe fruit like grapes but you know, I think everybody
knows these guys from picnics. They love picnics, and apparently
they love grapes. So what was happening is yellow jackets
were getting smashed up with the grapes, and you were
getting wasp venom in the wine. And then when when
these people drank it, they had an allergic reaction to
that venom. So this would probably be more of a
(11:35):
problem in a wine that hadn't been allowed to age then, right, Yeah,
they found that older wines were safe because even if
there's venom in there, the venom will have had time
to just to grade and lose its potency um. And
they said it's probably would be good with even just
a couple of weeks of aging. So something like a Beaujolais.
Aren't those very new? And don't you drink them very
(11:57):
quickly after they're produced? I think I've heard that. Yeah,
so yeah, that would if you had a wine it
was really fresh, like made yesterday. Uh, this would not
be a wine to drink if you had, you know,
some sort of like severe allergic reaction to say, wasp stings.
This is really interesting. My mother in law actually has
an allergy to um be stings. She always forgets to
(12:18):
carry eppiepen around with her. It makes me a little nervous.
So I guess that means that we can only drink
the really good stuff with her, the really good old
stuff of her nine good stuff. Um. So, our next
wine in our little flight of wines for this tasting
is a Chinese super wine, most excellent. What does it
(12:39):
do for you? Well, here's the deal, all right. So
everybody's read like we were talking about earlier, these articles
about hey, red wine is good for you, all these studies.
You know, red wine is good for you because of this.
It'll um um, you know, it'll it'll make it'll keep
you younger, it will make you live longer, it'll fight
cancer or heart disease or you know, you name it.
There's a lot of It boils down to the antioxidants,
(13:00):
right right, So the anti accidents and red wines are
called polyphenols, and the ideas that they're thought to protect
the lining of blood vessels in your heart according to
the MAO Clinic. And then there are these two main
types of antioxidants, so the flavonoids like flavor flavor and
non flavonoids and there's one non flavonoid that you guys
have heard a lot about, I'm betting, called raspy tal. Yeah,
(13:23):
you can butt and supplement front form, right, you can,
although you can't internationally. I think you can buy it
in the States. I don't know if the FDA is
regulated it yet or what. Yes, some of the stuff
is is weird, like you can get melotone in here
just over the counter, but I think it's more control
and like the UK. So, raspital is a compound found
naturally in grapeskins, and there have been various studies conducted
(13:45):
on it, and some of them have found that high
doses can improve muscle endurance and mice and also that
the compound keeps them slim. And of course again we'll
stress that the wine skins, uh, those end up more
in the process for red wine that's white. Red wine
is red and white wine is white. Right. So, other
(14:06):
studies have linked respiratual to improving longevity, and then of
course you have the people who say it doesn't but
it improves your overall health. Yeah, there's just seems like
for a while there's like a study every week somebody
else was hitting it and It's understandable because there's a
lot of money to be made and things like staying
young and living forever, indeed immortality. So it's been quite
(14:27):
the fat Yeah, to say nothing of, um, you know,
some sort of health reason to drink that glass of
wine every evening. So as if you needed an excuse, yeah,
you gotta say, I'm probably staying young. So if for
spiritual is really great for us, then why not make
this super wine that has a lot of it in
it and make a profit from it? Yeah, exactly. So
what's going on in China? Is that what they're after? Um,
(14:49):
well sort of, it's Um, there's some researchers at China's
Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, and they've been working to
produced a genetically modified grapevine. Okay, so what they're doing
is they're throwing in a gene variant from a particular
wild Chinese vine that increases rez virtral production. Um, they're
but they're they're not doing this specifically with the idea of, hey,
(15:11):
we will make some crazy wine that will make people
think they're gonna live forever. No, because it turns out
red virtral also works as an effective anti fungal agent
in the plant, protecting it, you know, from from fungus.
So that's really what they're going after with this. But
that's that's not what was necessarily picked up on by
by various media outlets, you know, because any fungal wine
(15:33):
and any fungal grapes and I may not read that,
but not a sexy but super Chinese wine that could
make me not age, you know. That sounds great, I'll
click on that. So what about robots and wine? What's
going on there? Oh? Well? Um, on one level, you
have the I think a number of people may have
seen this and actually did a blog entry about this
like a year ago. Um, and it's kind of old news.
(15:54):
But the Samoier robot from Japan's ANYC System Technologies, Um,
this is like, you know, and like all Japanese robots,
it's this cute little guy that you know, it was
kind of like a little like pudgy dwarf or something.
But it looks like he just came round of an anime,
you know. And but he can identify wines with an
(16:14):
infrared scanner and give food pairing recommendations. You can also
taste leftovers and tell you what they are, And can
we just stop right there? Why why is he tasting leftovers?
Why don't you know what the leftovers are in your fridge?
I mean, do you need a robot to tell you
what your leftovers are in your fridge? I thinst so unrecognizable?
And if if they're so unrecognizable in your fridge, then
(16:35):
perhaps you should just throw them away. Well, if you
start asking do we need a robot to do this,
that or the other, then I mean you're gonna end up.
I mean that crosses out most of the robotic stuff
that's going on in Japan. Well, this particular Summilier robot
identified human flesh as bacon, So it seems like there
are a few flaws to be worked out. Maybe I
don't know, maybe human flesh taste like bacon. I think
(16:56):
I've heard that before. Really, yeah, so maybe the robots
correct I suppose. Well, we have another pretty cool story
about one robots, and this one was detailed and Astrobiology magazine. Yeah,
this one is a pretty cool story. Um. It centers around, uh, basically,
a couple of years ago centers around this. Uh. You
see Berkeley chemistry professor by the name of Richard Matthews
(17:20):
all right, and uh. During the day, he was working
on a prototype for the Mars Organic Analyzer or MOA. Uh,
and this is the most sophisticated life detection instrument ever
to be sent to the Red planet and will be
going to So that's his day job. At night, like
a lot of us, who likes to come home, you know,
(17:40):
we sit on his porch, You have a little dinner,
have little red wine, and then go to sleep and
then wake up at like three thirty am, like hot,
flustered with a racing heart and uh, you know, has
to get out of bed and somehow call himself back downs.
We shouldn't going through menopause. What was going on? Um No,
But what was happening was something called tyramine. Okay, tyramine
(18:07):
the modified amino acid that sets off a chemical reaction
that causes the body to produce adrenaline. I mean, that
would be it. And it's common in a lot of
foods that are made with bacterial fermentation. So you're pungent cheeses, age, meats,
you know, all the good stuff. Yeah, so you know
he was probably was a little bummed out about this.
Professor Matthews had this idea. He wanted to know what
(18:29):
produces it, and then wham, he realized, well, what do
you know, he can marry his nighttime wine drinking with
his daytime job because he spent a decade of his
life in fact, building a machine that can analyze organic compounds. Yeah,
the most advanced one on the planet, you know. Yeah,
so that's pretty sweet to have that at your at
your disposal. Yeah. So what he did is he got
in touch with the local wine cellar and they started
(18:51):
running wines through this device. And the the original the
article which you can you can look up. It's online, um,
and we'll probably link to it on the blogs when
we sure well yeah, uh, there's a real detailed description
of how this device works. Um, And it's really detailed,
so we'll just trust trust is it works. That involves
lasers and uh and um and like tagging the molecules
(19:14):
and then analyzing them. And it's far more advanced than
anything that like the Viking. Um, you know Rover's head
on Mars in the past. But anyway, so he goes
the winery, they start running wine through it, and not
just the finished product, but like wine from every step
of the fermentation process. To figure out, you know, when
when the tyraman is coming into play, and uh, they
(19:36):
ended up keying in on the secondary fermentation process, also
known as the malolactic formation, where malik acid converts into
lactic acid um. And this is like malik is typically
in the fruits and it can be a bit bitter,
so lactic acid softens the taste. Right, So this is
(19:56):
the process that fills the wine with not only tira means,
but also histamines which cause allertic reactions, right, anti histamines. Sure. Yeah,
the research is still continuing, um, and they're looking at
like which which wines are more likely to contain tiramine
and which even which wineries are more likely to produce it.
But there's actually really even more incredible possible future for
(20:20):
this technology, right. You could see it being deployed on
a much grander scale. I mean, there's so many food
allergies and we're so hypper aware of what we're eating
these days, and peanuts have made the headlines numerous times.
You could see apparent wielding you know, handheld device like
this and analyzing sample of that airplane food to see
if it had peanuts in it or whatever your allergy
(20:40):
was Yeah. Matthews even predicts that this technology could be
incorporated into um like other food related gadgets, like it
could be part of a food processor or or something
even like in refrigeration, where you wouldn't have to look
in the refrigerator and and be like, mmmmm, I wonder
if the tuna fish is going to kill me today,
because the refrigerator will tell you, hey, dude, don't eat
that tuna fish because it will kill you. You You know
(21:02):
that kind of thing. So it's pretty pretty amazing. Yeah,
I would totally be your call if you disobeyed the device,
which I would be likely to do. I hate to
see food go to waste. I thought you'd like, you
hate to be bossed around by refrigerators to close the door.
I don't want to close the door. So there you
have it. There's some some science and wine UM. So
(21:24):
if you're of legal age and in the next time
you partake of of a fine vintage, I hope you
think of us. So, hey, we got a little reader
mail by the way, Oh why didn't you eat it?
We recently heard from Shantal from Australia and she had
a couple of things to correct us on. First, in
(21:46):
the Venom podcast. Uh, we were talking about a gusset
um which and it turns out this is a part
of the pantyhose and it's not a specifically an Australian thing. Okay,
so good, good to know on that part. Also, she
wanted to clarify we were kind of having a little
fun with Australia and it's many venomous things and talking
(22:09):
about people having to wear pantyhose everywhere to keep from
being killed by horrible, horrible lives. She set a straight
on the difference between panty house and stockings, which I
was not aware of. I think I used the terms
interchangeably until now, but now I will not. Yeah, I
was not aware either. But she also points out and
should I do that Australian accident? No, I don't think so.
I think I think no Australian accent um, she says.
(22:31):
By the way, we don't live in caves. We all
have electricity, and none of us ride kangaroos to work
each day. Good. You know, the spider and venomous creatures
are only found out in the wild, and our National
geographic shows our cities and towns are much the same
as those in the USA, just with less junk food outlets.
Good to know. I still want to visit badly. Yeah, yeah,
(22:52):
I'd like to get down there. So if you want
to tell us what's on your mind, whether it's about
Australia wine or anything else and Usnina signed stuff that
has to firk start come yeah and check out the blogs.
We have a lot of cool blog entries. The fact
we have one that did recently about like what is
the coldest wine can get? And where where's the coldest
place in the universe you could possibly drink? It? Sounds good? Yeah,
(23:14):
it's pretty funn have to read it over a glass
of one. Yeah. Oh, and we have a Twitter and
a Facebook. We do, yeah, so check that out. We're
lab stuff on Twitter and you can also just do
a search for lab stuff on on Facebook as well.
We're Google. Yeah. All right, that's all we have. Thanks
for listening, guys for more on this and thousands of
(23:41):
other topics because at how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page.
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