Vinography, August 3, 2007:
The fact is, such scientific findings always run smack up against the brick wall of wine romanticism. People don't like thinking of winemaking as chemistry, despite the fact that it is very much so. The wine world lives in a strange dichotomy, where different wine lovers tend to draw very arbitrary and personal lines about just how much "science" they're willing to tolerate in their wine before it stops being wine, and starts being an engineered beverage. Hence the ominous nature of our increasing knowledge about why wine tastes like it does. The more we know, the less magic it seems.My own view is that knowing the chemistry adds, not subtracts, from the appreciation of the wine. Knowing that orange juice has citric acid or beer carbon dioxide never lowered my enjoyment of either. And we have gone far, far afield from "non-engineered" wine; even shoes and forks are engineered.
But then I am cold-blooded rationalist Yank. What do I know?
Labels: chemistry
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