Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Wine is very chic right now, but our love affair with the bottled grape has been going on longer than recorded history. For me, wine holds little allure, since my first several attempts at sampling wine induced horrific migraines. No doubt, there are hundreds of types that won’t cause my brain to implode and initiate self-sustaining fusion, but I think I’ll pass just the same. Still, I find the chemistry of wine, and its hold on people, quite fascinating.

Take for instance the tannins. Tannins aren’t one chemical, they are a chemical family that leach from the skins of grapes during the fermentation process. Wines recommended to be paired with meat, for instance, should have “well-balanced tannins.” I’ve always found that to be an odd phrase, partly because I don’t drink wine for pain avoidance reasons, but also because tannins in my world have another popular chemical use. Tannin is actually derived from the word Tanna, which is probably more familiar to you as Tannenbaum from the Christmas carol. It’s an old High German word meaning oak. Oak trees use their tannins to poison things that want to grow in their space, and to discourage bugs from eating them. People have used them for thousands of years to turn animal skins into leather, hence the term ‘tanning’ leather.

Not only are we drinking chemicals we use to turn cow skins into shoes, and enjoying them, the whole chemistry of taste angle is bizarre too. Most generally, people perceive tastes when a chemical interacts with a smell receptor. Tannins pretty much ignore the smell receptors to do something far weirder. They bind temporarily with proteins in the mouth, causing a distinct change in saliva viscosity and in the ‘mouth feel’ of what is eaten. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise, as tannins are phenols, chemically speaking, and one use of phenol in the chemistry lab is to denature, or unravel, proteins.

More than twenty- five years ago I was a lab assistant in a molecular genetics research lab, when I inadvertently used the wrong type of tubing for my phenol. It ate the tubing, dripped onto the countertop, and left a big white burn on my forearm and elbow. For the entire next week, every bloody thing tasted like fish, even just the air I breathed. I'm not really a huge fan of non-sushified fish. Granted that phenol is far more concentrated than what you’d find in wine, but the whole fish-flavor experience still gives me pause.

If the tannins weren’t enough, you also have to consider the acid in your wine. Not LSD, unless you’re far more adventurous than most, but common garden variety acid. Eating acids is nothing new, from lemon juice to tomatoes, many foods contain a considerable amount. One would think that the more acidity a wine has, the tarter it will taste, but that doesn’t always hold true. Like the tannins, acids don’t act on flavor receptors, so they don’t exactly taste, at least not by themselves. They do, however, play an important role in ‘balancing’ the flavor of a wine.

More far reaching in the flavor impact department are the sugars. Yeasts, the little single-celled work horses that like to convert sugars to alcohol in that beloved process of fermentation, are what we employ to make wine. Two main kinds of sugars are present: glucose and fructose. Early on, there’s a lot more glucose than fructose, but as the grape becomes overripe, its metabolism changes, and fructose takes the lead. Grape producers call this process ‘raisining’ and with a couple of varietal exceptions, it is a very bad thing for wine. Using overripe grapes can lead to the wine tasting more like rotten candy than anything else, at least according to those that actually drink the stuff.

Just a few fun thoughts for a Monday morning.

Cheers,

Michelle