Friend Episode:  Beer and Wine and Tennisballs

Jacob:

 Hello, and welcome to the next episode of human friend digital. I’m your co-host Jacob Meyer. 

Jeffrey:

And I’m your other co-host Jeffrey Caruso 

Jacob:

and today’s episode, or turning it around. I’m asking questions to Jeff. 

Jeffrey:

It’s the friend episode, as opposed to the digital episode.  

Jacob:

Hopefully, this is more interesting. So, one thing that our listeners are going to learn about you through this process is that you have a bit of a background in chemistry. And so today’s episode, to me, there’s a couple of things that I really wanted to ask some questions about and learn with you. And you have some training in the hospitality industry, the beer and some wine… And one time I watched a show with a, Sommelier…

Jeffrey:

Sommelier

Jacob:

Sommelier: and this guy threw out all sorts of words, like tennis ball, about the flavors. So first explain Sommelier for an average person, and then what the hell is going on with the chemistry? I was hoping you could talk a little bit about Sommelier and tennis balls. 

Jeffrey:

So first of all, Sommelier, they’re basically a wine steward. Anyone can call themselves a Sommelier, but there is a credential, like certification process– in North America, it is the “North American Sommelier Association”, but different parts of the world have different names for that organization, and they all sort of report to the same Sommelier central body. So there’s…

Jacob:

Oh my God, I had no idea it was that organized. 

Jeffrey:

Well, you know, it’s the French: notorious for their organizational skills.  

So there’s four levels of certification, that go all the way up to master. And a master Sommelier, there’s only like a couple hundred in the world. When I was studying, I was studying for the Level One, which is basically like a theoretical knowledge of wine. So you didn’t have to taste anything, but you had to be like, what should a Bordeaux taste like? Where can they grow Riesling? Stuff like that. 

So, I studied for that. My company wouldn’t pay for me to have the certification, but that’s the level I studied for. So I have a rudimentary knowledge in these things. 

Jacob:

Okay. But you did have a double major in chemistry and science…

Jeffrey:

…And biology: did a double major.

Jacob:

Now tell me why were they saying… Where did they get those weird words that don’t make any sense? Cause I go into a wine section of a store and I see the word Jamey all the time…

Jeffrey:

Oh, my God. 

Jacob:

That makes sense. There’s fruit in this.  

Jeffrey:

Jamey wine is like a byword for something that’s so fruity and cloying, that unless you want a really sweet wine, don’t go with jammy. But, you know, these terms like tennis ball, or like wet rocks, right? So, to the general consumer of wine, they probably don’t mean that much. To more advanced drinkers, they might be able to identify those flavors. But the usefulness of it is that it produces a really specific idea, like opening a can of tennis balls has a very, very distinct smell. And I’m guessing that that wasn’t what– whatever the winemaker wanted was not to evoke tennis balls. But it’s a useful description because everyone knows what– well people who have played tennis know what that smells like.

As far as the chemistry of it goes… So there are a number of different compounds, or classes of compounds, in food and beverage that elicit taste and smell. And the big categories of those are: ethers, esters, and phenols. Oh, gosh, we’re going to get into the weeds here. 

Jacob:

That’s all right. They only sound like three little old ladies: Ester, Ether, and Phenol. The three little old ladies of flavor. 

Jeffrey:

So in terms of those compounds produced, you always want some of them. But depending on how you’re fermenting the wine, you might get too much of something, based on the temperature that you’re using, the yeast strain that you’re using to ferment the wine. So, sometimes these flavors come up that… they’re not really what you wanted. But…

So, the basic chemical process of fermentation is: you have [Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + Carbon Dioxide]. So, that’s the basics of it. But there are other enzymes within the yeast that will break down different compounds in different ways and produce the different esters and ethers and phenol; the flavor compounds. And let’s say you picked the wrong yeast strain and ended up creating all of these… it can even create ethyl acetate, which is nail polish remover. And it’s like, you didn’t want that, but that’s what’s in it…

Jacob:

That would be disgusting: the worst tasting wine of all time.

Jeffrey:

But, it’s descriptive. If you see someone describing something like tennis balls, you’re maybe like, “I don’t want that wine”. 

And I don’t know, maybe there’s some winemakers who really want that flavor in their wine, I don’t know. But the point is, it seems really out of the box, but those descriptions, as ridiculous as they are, can be really useful for someone who’s really trying to understand the flavor profiles of the wine.  

Jacob:

So the other thing I wanted to talk about in regards to this: so, you’re drinking wine, and if it tastes like that thing, you’re actually tasting a little bit of a similar chemical that appears in there? But it’s safe over here: you wouldn’t eat a tennis ball; you wouldn’t need some dirt. 

Jeffrey:

No, but it can be an analogous compound. So there’s lots of compounds that are similar enough that they elicit the same response in your sensory organs. But they’re not, per se, exactly the same compounds. So, you know, don’t eat a tennis ball: I don’t know if it’s toxic or not, but I imagine it is. 

Jacob:

I have one question that isn’t on the pod list’s that just popped into my head now: What makes a smell, a smell in chemistry? There’s nothing about all these chemicals that say, or any chemical that says, “why does it smell”?

Jeffrey:

Oh, well, there’s  absolutely things about those chemicals that say why it smells: So basically you have the roof of your nasal cavity is your olfactory platform, basically. And you have all these receptors on it, and they only attach to certain kinds of compounds. So you don’t attach to water. Right? 

Jacob:

Oh, really?

Jeffrey:

Well, cats do…

Jacob:

Water could actually have a smell, but we don’t smell it? 

Jeffrey:

We don’t smell it. Think about like: dogs can smell, I don’t know how many more millions of times sensitive their nose is, but it’s not just more sensitive, it’s sensitive to more compounds than ours… Like we have evolved, through our evolutionary history, to rely really heavily on sight and sound, and significantly less on smell and taste. 

Jacob:

Alright, so backup real quick. We have that nose smelling these chemical compounds… So really, is smell, almost like a hallucination? Our brain is trying to find a way to interpret a non visual cue? So it’ll just make up…

Jeffrey:

It’s not “making up”, it’s building on patterns of association. 

But yeah, essentially. 

What you sort of brought up tangentially is that people’s interpretation of the same compound can be very different. So in beer…

Jacob:

Oh, wait, that reminds me: So, what’s a Sommelier for beer? 

Jeffrey:

Okay, so, the Sommelier for beer is a Cicerone. And that’s another international accrediting organization. They have like four levels and I got my level one in Cicerone; so just very theoretical knowledge, again, for the level one. 

Jacob:

So, you’re a Cicerone: they’re going to be doing the same thing. Like you were saying, people can taste things for beer differently, and the Cicerones are identifying that stuff, maybe?

Jeffrey:

Yeah, basically. And then I also worked in a brewery for a while, and part of our training– it was optional training for my position, but I thought it was really interesting– is sensory training. So they’d give you a beer the way it should taste, and they’d give you a beer the way it shouldn’t taste, and you need it to be able to identify what was wrong in the off-beer. And, once you trained on that for a while, they’d give you blind tastes and you have to be like: “that one’s wrong, and this is why” 

Jacob:

Was there a taste that was, like, an outside taste that you didn’t expect? 

Jeffrey:

Well, there’s all kinds of them. One of them, like I brought up earlier, ethyl acetate, that can happen if you ferment beer at too high of a temperature. And then you’re tasting it and it tastes like solvent, it tastes like nail polish remover…  Maybe like band-aids or latex, and that’s definitely not a desirable flavor in beer, 

So light-struck, commonly known as a “skunked beer”, and this happens when a beer is exposed to light for a period of time, because the UV rays in sunlight can change the chemical composition of some of the molecules in the beer. 

Jacob:

Oh, I remember this. I remember having some problems with this with Corona when I was younger, 

Jeffrey:

Because it’s a clear bottle: a clear bottle does not protect against the rays. But, a brown bottle will… a green bottle also will not… but the point is that light struck beer produces something that some people interpret as skunk-smell, but other people interpret that same smell as ground coffee, right?

So, all of these off-flavors in beer and in wine, might not actually be unpleasant flavors, at least not to everybody.  

Jacob:

Oh, that’s how the IPA started. Right? Isn’t that the history of an IPA? 

Jeffrey:

Right, so, the hops in beer act as a stabilizer and like an antibacterial element. So, when they were shipping beer from India to Britain, they would pack it with a bunch of hops so that it would stay good on the long voyage, and that’s sort of how that came about. And then,  through time, people’s tastes have changed– I’ve never been a huge fan of IPA’s, but there’s some good ones out there– but, some people interpret it as really bitter, other people interpret it as very flavorful. And the point is, is like: an off-flavor isn’t a bad flavor, it’s just what the brewer– or in the case of wine, the winemaker– didn’t want to be in the final product. It’s an unintended flavor. Some of them are downright bad, like I said, like band-aids no one wants that. But some of them are just like, “wrong place, wrong time”, not that they’re bad flavors. 

Jacob:

So, this segues nicely into… Now you have all these flavors, and you’re thinking about these flavors… The other day you brought over a nice wine to our dinner. It was a Cheverny. 

Jeffrey:

I don’t know, my French is so bad. It’s from the Loire Valley. It’s one of my favorites. Just quick facts: so, the Loire Valley, where this area in the Loire Valley in France is, is home to some really expensive… they call them Appellation, like, parts of land that… you know: this is a Sancerre, this is a Vouvray, this is a Chablis, this is a Cheverny…

Jacob:

I’ve never heard the word “Appalachian” out of the context of the “Appalachian Mountains”.

Jeffrey:

So very different spelling, but it’s just a plot of land that’s certified, by the French government, to produce this specific kind of wine. 

Jacob:

Again, we have the French being very organized…

Jeffrey:

When it comes to wine, they really are. So, it’s a specific site of land that is approved to grow this specific kind of wine. And so, in the Loire Valley– like Sancerre, and Vouvray, are very expensive Sauvingon Blancs– Cheverny is right next to them, and it’s like four times cheaper. So it’s like, if you want something pretty similar, go with a Cheverny.

Jacob:

It’s just a block over.

Jeffrey:

Yeah, it’s a block over. And, obviously there’s microclimates, and maybe the microclimate for a Cheverny is not as conducive as it is for a Sancerre, but for the regular drinker, go with the Cheverny: you’re going to get just as good of results. 

Jacob:

So during that meal, you said “when in doubt, buy Champagne”, when you couldn’t figure out which wines to pair with which things? So why is Champagne different from most other wines when it comes to this?

Jeffrey:

I say, “when in doubt, buy Champagne”, really it’s “when in doubt, buy sparkling”. But I just really prefer Champagne.

Jacob:

So you can go cheaper, like Prosecco…

Jeffrey:

You could, yeah, but in my view, you shouldn’t…

Jacob:

As a person with Italian heritage, I just find that delightful. You are a person with Italian heritage, just to be clear for people watching this, just to be like, “no, he’s going to go with the French one”. 

Jeffrey:

I’m going to go with the French one. I also have French heritage, so, you know, I’m sticking true to my roots. 

Jacob:

Okay, back to the…

Jeffrey:

So Champagne… it’s not that it pairs well universally, it’s that it acts as a palette cleanser. So, let’s say you’re at Thanksgiving dinner: There’s a million different dishes, they all taste really distinct from one another.  You can’t pick a wine that’s going to pair for all of them. So you could do four wines and just, depending on the course, switch the wines out. Or, just do Champagne for everybody, because Champagne is going to cleanse your palette. So, when you have all these complex flavors in the meal: you take a bite of stuffing, sip of Champagne, clears the palate; then you can have a bite of cranberry, and it’s going to be just as fresh as if you hadn’t had the stuffing before. 

Jacob:

So, I make sushi as a hobby. 

Jeffrey:

Oh, that’s cute.

Jacob:

I think it’s very manly cause there’s very sharp knives, but, pickled ginger is often served with sushi, and a lot of people throw them around willy-nilly. And, then when I got into sushi, I realized, that is what you’re saying: there’s so many different types of sushi that you can have, and they’re very subtle flavors too, that can be easily overpowered: that’s kind of like the nice thing about sushi as a culinary thing, is that most of the flavors are really mild, so if you have a California roll, that has a delicate amount of flavor, and then you switch over to something that’s one of those super spicy things, and all the shaggy stuff with wabi sabi, when you go back to the California roll, you won’t be able to taste almost anything in it so you can use Champagne to do that.

Jeffrey:

Really, all sparkling wines will do that, but like I said, Champagne is the best. 

Jacob:

Okay. So, my last question, and part confession, because I listened to you “when in doubt, buy Champagne”, and I went to the store and saw the price of champagne, and then I picked Prosecco… So then I got home, and it was a long day, and I was trying to just basically buy a bottle of bubbly to have for my wife when we got home, and I thought, “great, I don’t have to worry about what it’s going to go with with our dinner”. Now I bought the Prosecco, not in the cooled section, I bought it off the shelf, so it was warm. And typically when I serve white wine, and it’s warm, I put an ice cube in it. I don’t really care: people say “it’s not the best plan”. So with this one, though, something weird happened and I’d never noticed it before, cause I don’t buy bubbly a lot, I put the ice cube in and it bubbled like crazy. Why does the wine bubble so violently when I put an ice cube in it, and this would also help defend my case– I wasn’t the worst husband in that moment– is that there’s a chemical thing that was outside of my control.

Jeffrey:

…Outside of your understanding. You absolutely held control over it by putting the ice cube in the wine. 

So with bubbles, it’s actually a really interesting question. Like an ice cube into a, a liquid with dissolved gas– so that could be like a soda, or a sparkling wine: there’s carbon dioxide dissolved within that liquid. So, cooling the liquid down, theoretically, with an ice cube, should lower the effervescence of the dissolved gas. 

Jacob:

What’s effervescence?

Jeffrey:

So the gas coming out of solution: the gas bubbling. So cooling the liquid would lower the rate of effervescence generally, but because an ice cube: One, increases the surface area that the liquid is in contact to, It gives the gas molecules more purchase, and then also ice cube is an imperfect object, so there’s going to be air bubbles within the ice cube and like divots on the surface. Basically, you’re exposing the liquid to more surface area and to air pockets, and both of those are going to make the gas want to come out of solution much faster. 

And so with Prosecco specifically… because you asked me the other day: isn’t, like sparkling wine, just sparkling wine. And I’m like, no, it’s not.

Jacob:

Um, you’re making me sound very dumb on this.  

Jeffrey:

No, it’s a friend episode: You make me sound dumb every other episode, so this is my turn.

So, Prosecco and Champagne… So with any sparkling wine, you have two fermentation steps: one to make the alcohol, and one to make the bubbles, right? So you’ve finished making the alcohol, and then you add more yeast, and usually  some sugar at the same time, and it will create carbon dioxide bubbles: You put a cap on whatever it is that you’re fermenting in, and then that will trap the gas in the solution. 

So with Prosecco, they do it in these big stainless steel vats, right? And Champagne, they do it within the bottle. So that causes one of two things: The first one is, Champagne is considered “en lies”, which means it’s in contact with the yeast. And so that gives it a different flavor profile, they call it “brioche”, so it tastes a little bready. But the second thing is that the carbon dioxide is not in a huge tank, it’s in one bottle. And so, that ends up giving you a much more fine and persistent bubble experience with the Champagne, whereas Prosecco tends to be a lot frothier, bigger bubbles. And so, like you said, the impact of adding an ice cube to a Prosecco is going to be much, much bigger than adding it to a Champagne. 

If you want to cool down a bottle very quickly: wet a towel, wrap the bottle in the towel, put it in the freezer for like 10 minutes, you’ll get it down to good temperature.

Jacob:

I’ll do that next time.

Jeffrey:

That’s the way to do it 

Jacob:

Now, then, what will happen is I forget it’s in there and then it will explode, make a giant mess, and then I’ll never ever be able to buy bubbles again. 

Well, good, that was very educational. 

And with that, with that terrible story, that’s basically everything for today’s episode. 

Thank you for listening to the human friend digital podcast. If you have any questions about today’s episode, or if you would like to suggest future topics for us to cover, please message us through our [email protected].