Pairing Wine With Science

We’re rolling out a fresh vintage of science news items that involve wine. There’s a bit of intrigue in the nose, notes of curiosity and surprise greet the palate, and the experience finishes off with a mild aftertaste of silliness.

First up are reports from Japan where chemists have revealed why there’s more to the matter of pairing white wine with seafood and red with meat than mere customary convention, such as not wearing white after Labor Day.

As reported by PhysOrg, the study by Takayuki Tamura and colleagues that is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry finds that it hinges on iron. Tamura’s findings indicate that the higher iron content typical of red wines, and in particular the ferrous ionic form of iron, will impart to the wine an unpleasant, fishy aftertaste when served with seafood (scallops were used as the seafood of choice for the study).

And secondly, we have some geologists who managed to uncork a bit of a tempest stemming from a presentation titled "The Relationship of Geology, Soils, Hydrology and Climate to Wine" at the recent annual meeting of the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Portland, Ore.

The talk was geared toward taking the already controversial notion of terroir down a notch. Terroir, shortened from the French gout du terroir, meaning "taste of the soil," refers to the aspects of flavor given to the wine by the unique setting in which the grapes are grown. The presentation supposed that the ability to taste the unique mineral signature of a winery-specific vintage resides more in one’s head than in the wine itself. The abstract to the accompanying presentation describes terroir as "romantic and highly useful commercially but it is scientifically untenable."

Perhaps predicting, correctly, that such a brash statement from a bunch of geologists would be precisely as welcome among vintners as would be winemakers stepping up to the task of seismic analysis, participants softened things up a bit. As quoted by Seattle Post Intelligencer, geologist Alex Maltman backpedals just a bit:

"I am not saying that chemistry and geology have no effect on the wine. It may have effects that we don't understand."

Still, some feathers in the wine community were mildly ruffled. While the ability to taste precise aspects of a specific site’s soil chemistry in the chardonnay produced there may be open for debate, the matter is intractably and deliciously complex. Winemakers maintain that the soil, its chemistry, and additionally the slope of the land, how readily it drains, not to mention such site-specific climate conditions of temperature, sunlight and precipitation, are all involved in making contributions to the uniqueness of the finished product.

Photo courtesy of Tomas Castelazo, via Wikimedia Commons