The Science of Steak and Wine

Who would ever eat a good steak without a glass bottle of a good red wine?  Not I.  I prefer an earthy Pinot Noir, but a Cab or a Zin will do just fine.

Gastronomes and chefs know that certain foods pair well together.  But why?

Science now knows.

Drinks such as wine and tea and foods like pickles and sorbets are astringent, and they "elicit ‘dry, rough’ sensations, in part, by breaking down mucinous lubricating proteins in saliva."  Steak and other fatty foods lubricate the mouth that lessens the astringent feelings. The recent work* shows that "oral fatty sensations and astringency represent opposite ends of an oral spectrum extending from ‘slippery’ at one end to ‘dry’ and ‘rough’ at the other. This provides an explanation of how these sensations interplay over the course of a meal and maintain the balance of a moderate position along a tribological scale of oral sensations."  In other words, the alternating bites of a rib eye with sips of red wine leaves the mouth with a nice feeling.

Bon Appetit!

*Opponency of astringent and fat sensations, Catherine Peyrot des Gachons, Emi Mura, Camille Speziale, Charlotte J. Favreau, Guillaume F. Dubreuil, and Paul A.S. Breslin, Current Biology, Vol. 22, No. 19, R830 (2012).

Magnetic Whine

I was flying back from Washington, D.C. on Tuesday when I got a little bored.  So I picked up the SkyMall catalog to see what outrageously expensive crap they had. 

These three items piqued my curiosity, so I ripped the page from the catalog.

Put your bottle of 2 Buck Chuck on one of these, and then somehow the magnets "realign the particles." Pardon my language and borrowing from Penn & Teller, but Bullshit!

I've dealt with this issue once before in Swirling Wine.  In my Electricity and Magnetism course, the students understand that magnets interact with other magnets, and they come to understand that a magnet does not necessarily have to be those things we stick to out refrigerator.  Electrical currents (moving electrons) also interact magnetically.  That's why we have electromagnets.

While there might be tiny, tiny amounts of iron in the wine, there is no process in which magnets will change the character of cheap wine.  

Now if I could get golfers to stop buying the magnetic bracelet crap.

Wine Prevents Aging?

From Science Daily

"Resveratrol: Study Resolves Controversy On Life-Extending Red Wine Ingredient, Restores Hope for Anti-Aging Pill

A study in the May issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism appears to offer vindication for an approach to anti-aging drugs that has been at the center of heated scientific debate in recent years. The new findings show for the first time that the metabolic benefits of the red wine ingredient known as resveratrol evaporate in mice that lack the famed longevity gene SIRT1."

I think this calls for a really nice Oregon Pinot Noir.

My Personal Periodic Table

Here are the only elements I need.

A Lesson on Wine and Physics

There's a field of physics engineering called statics.  It is concerned with the forces and torques acting on objects at rest.  If you want to build a bridge, you have to understand statics.

Here's an example of either poor engineering of store shelves or of incorrect loading of those shelves.

Now let the crying commence..

This Month's Science Experiments

My post from earlier today got me to thinking.  The best reason for wine? 

It's the perfect combination of biology, chemistry and physics.

Another Reason Wine is Good

University Professor and Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences Francisco Ayala, a geneticist at UC-Irvine, gave the university $10 million.  The gift is to show gratitude to both the university and his adopted country.  He was born in Spain and came to the U.S. as a student.

My first question is - Where does a biology professor get $10 million?  

I love the answer. He grows grapes in Central California.  By the way, he loves Pinot Noir.

UCI Press Release

OC Register article

I have to reprint one of the questions/answers from the Register article.

Q. Is there a tendency in our society to mix up religion and evolution?

A. I am afraid largely so. I think it is wonderful to teach the Bible, but not to pretend the Bible is an introductory textbook for biology or astronomy.

We succeed in keeping these kinds of things out of the schools, but then the impact on the public at large is not as good as you would expect to have. In the last few weeks, two or three of the Republican presidential candidates have expressed skepticism about evolution. And yet, evolution is confirmed as much as any scientific theory, and better than most. Evolution is confirmed as well as (the idea that) the Earth goes around the sun, or that matter consists of atoms.

It's a matter of scientific ignorance. It's a matter of religious ignorance; as you surely know, most religious authorities, most churches, are in favor of evolution. As, famously, an Anglican minister -- a theologian -- said, (evolution) appeared first as an enemy, and has turned out to be our best friend, because evolution can now explain all of these sorts of cruelties or mistakes that exist in the world of life.

Let's start with a simple example. The human jaw is not large enough for all the teeth. So we have to pull wisdom teeth -- sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes all four. An engineer who designed the human jaw would be fired. And yet here we are, saying that would have been designed by God.

Much more extreme and much more serious is the human reproductive system. The human reproductive system is a mess. Twenty percent of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, or miscarriages, in the first two months, because the human reproductive system is so badly designed. They blame God for 20 million abortions per year; there are about 100 million births in the world a year.

Swirling your wine.

Last night for dinner, I opened a great bottle of Syrah from my favorite vinery, Blackjack Ranch near Solvang, California. It prompted me to finally write about some wine science, the science of wine swirling.

Swirling your wine helps release the volatile aromatic compounds and exposes the wine to oxygen allowing the esters, ethers and aldehydes to oxidize. These chemical reactions enhance the bouquet of the wine, The bouquet of the wine is especially important, because it is your sense of smell that mostly determines what you taste. These same reactions though will eventually turn your wine into something nasty. So if you open a bottle, drink it.

Being right handed, when I swirl wine I tend to swirl it counterclockwise. It never occurred to me to try to swirl it the other way. That is, not until I came across this - Wine Swirling, Left or Right? It Matters! Read it and be awed by Ralph de Amicis.

Lets start with this:

Like all living things wine cells have a magnetic polarity, just like humans and the Earth.

What in the hell is a wine cell? The basic component of all life is the cell. WIne is fermented grape juice. It's not alive, although wine sometimes makes me feel more alive. Cells do not have a magnetic polarity, although some cells may contain magnetic compounds. It is thought that this may be a mechanism that allow birds to navigate during their migrations.

Next!

"The positive pole is more highly charged, just like the North Pole of the Earth, which is why there are Northern Lights in the Arctic Circle, but not Southern Lights in the Antarctic."

The Earth's magnetic field causes the Northern Lights, but he claims there no such thing as the Southern Lights. So what is this a picture of? The Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) as seen from the International Space Station.

"This polarity tends to keep wine cells generally upright, spinning on their axis when they are being swirled. This magnetic action within a liquid is commonly demonstrated in laboratories. Because plant molecules are mostly liquid, when they form they are also subject to the electromagnetic forces that are a component of the rotation of the Earth. As a result, the pores on the surface of the molecules develop based on that rotation, like the shingles on a roof." 

I can't take it! Plant molecules are liquid? Nonsense. The electromagnetic forces that are the component of the Earth's rotation. Please make it stop! Molecules have pores? Now this is actually starting to hurt.

"When you swirl the wine counter-clockwise you are pushing against the molecules nap, just like stroking the fur of a cat the wrong way…"

Now I'm rolling on the floor imagining petting a molecule the wrong way.

But on a serious note. I have no doubt that Ralph believes every word of what he writes, and he provides the perfect rationale for why serious scientific research, especially ones involving human subjects, always are double-blind studies. In a double-blind wine tasting, one researcher would take the samples of wine label, pour them into glasses, and label the glasses so that the wine's identity is unknown to anyone else. These samples are then given to second researcher who would then present the samples to a subject. Using this method, the second research cannot inadvertently influence the subject and skew the results. When subjects are allowed to be influenced you get humorous results like these studies.

If this blog post accomplished anything, I hope it was to get you to open a nice wine and enjoy. Cheers!

Listening to Music: Friends, Wine, Audiophilia, and Las Vegas

Dedicated to Steve and Wayne.

Every January, I travel to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show, in particular to hear the latest in high end audiophile equipment. [But really it's just an excuse to meet up with my Chicago lawyers and eat and drink.] Each time I make sure to visit the Burmester suite to hear what I hope will one day be my stereo system.

Now all I need is $500,000. Then the neighborhood will be introduced to Miles Davis and John Coltrane in true style.

Inevitably we get around to talking about the differences between tubes and solid state. Tubes? Vacuum tubes. Most people under the age of 40 may never have seen a vacuum tube, because the transistor and then the IC chip has made tubes ancient history in every industry except high end audio.

Now to the point. I never realized how complex it is to listen to music. You know that old saw about a person uses only 20% of the brain. I'm not exaggerating much when I say that we are using nearly all of brain. The cerebrum is involved in keeping time, parts of the midbrain is involved in the emotion, the frontal lobe takes all the info and does the higher level processing. I can't do justice to all the neuroscience involved, but I can recommend Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science Of A Human Obsession."

Now back to some Miles Davis and a nice Sauvignon Blanc.