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E.B. Mcgovern / AP file
Berle 'Rusty' Figgins, winemaker at Cave B Estate Winery, checks some red wine in the barrel room at the resort in Quincy, Wash., in 2006. You probably won't fine a blender around the winery.
By Douglas Main
LiveScience
BOSTON — Decanting wine is a common tactic among some oenophiles, and involves pouring the drink through an aerator or into a special container to let it "breathe." But inventor and amateur chef Nathan Myhrvold has an even better and faster way: Put it in the blender.
This agitates the wine and makes it react with air more quickly, performing the same role as decanting but faster, Myhrvold said in a speech here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on last Saturday.
But the real reason to do it? "The looks on people's faces," Myhrvold said. "If you do this with a wine expert in the room — it's as if you committed some deeply unnatural act."
"But it's food," he continued. "Why is it OK with daiquiris and not with Bordeaux?"
There are several possible explanations for why decanting, or blending, improves the taste, said Myhrvold, who holds nearly 250 technology-related patents and recently wrote a tome about the science of cooking, titled "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking" (The Cooking Lab, 2011). The practice could lead to the oxidization of certain flavor compounds, vent pent-up gases such as sulfur dioxide or release other volatile components from the wine, he said. [Science You Can Eat: 10 Odd Facts About Food]
Myhrvold performed his magic for a Spanish duke, one of the top winemakers in Spain, throwing the royal's favorite red wine into the blender. The duke did a blind taste test and preferred the blended one, but didn't believe Myhrvold afterward. If he'd "been a duke from years of old he would have run me through with his sword right there," said Myhrvold, who was once the chief technology officer for Microsoft and now chief executive officer of the patent company Intellectual Ventures.
Myhrvold shared several other secrets from his investigations into the science of cooking. Among them:
- Cucumbers are less solid than milk. The former are 95 percent water, while milk is 88 percent water.
- Charcoal grills work via radiant energy, which leads to uneven cooking. To greatly improve a grill's efficiency, layer the inside with aluminum foil, which reflects these electromagnetic waves.
- If you put ground peas into a laboratory-grade centrifuge and spin it for about an hour, you will eventually get three layers of pea sediment. The middle layer yields "pea butter," a most delicious substance that contains no fat.
Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
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Leave a Comment:
A fish tank aerator works great for the whole bottle.
Some guy is wasting time on whirled peas when he can do more good working on World Peace.
"Some guy is wasting time on whirled peas when he can do more good working on World Peace."
There will never be world peace. The easier life gets the more people reproduce and make it hard again.
zyksr: Never mind; you missed my point.
A fish tank aerator works great for the whole bottle.
How long in the blender??
Great advice if you are drinking nicer wines. Seeing as I drink $10 or under bottles, I doubt putting it into the blender is going to do me any favors =)
Interesting ... but. With a gazillion bubbles in the wine, it would look like a bottle of opened wine left sitting on a back shelf for several months in warm weather. Eye appeal is half the drinking experience. Nose the other half. Taste is an afterthought! Good thing the duke was blindfolded. Now, for the sake of science, I'll give it a try. à votre santé!
The bubbles dissapate in a matter of seconds.
"Taste is an afterthought!"
Hahahahaha!
Some guy is wasting time on whirled peas when he can do more good working on World Peace.
If eye appeal is half the experience and taste is an afterthought, then why drink it at all? Unless by "eye appeal" you mean half the experience is other people seeing you drink it, an idea which anyone old enough to legally drink the wine should have outgrown already.
If a plate of food is put before you there are two things that immediately measure the acceptability of the meal.
1. Looking at the food. Is it appealing? Does it look “right” or is it somehow “off” in your mind’s eye? And the plate and utensils? Does the plate look clean. Are there greasy fingerprints on your knife and fork? The food my be very good, but the cleanliness of the plate, knife and fork diminish the whole experience.
2. Does the food smell right? If it doesn’t smell right, then there might be some hesitation to eat it. Given a glass of milk it may look alright, but lifting the glass to your nose might suggest it is somewhat “off” to the nose.
No need to further list examples as I’m sure you get the point. If the food, or drink, looks right; if the plates or glassware or cutlery (either paper, fine china, plastic, crystal, sterling) look reasonably clean; and, if everything smells as you expect that it should, you will be inclined to eat and drink to your heart’s content. The correctness of it all will likely have a strong influence on your taste sensation. Taste will be the third in line to the entire experience. An “afterthought” as it were.
"If eye appeal is half the experience and taste is an afterthought, then why drink it at all?"
Ever been given a glass of wine not entirely clear? Presented in a glass with fingerprints or lipstick on the rim? Likely, you rejected the wine for any other reason but the obvious.
Having actually done this after hearing about it a while back, I can report the following...
Now... this isn't a trick for older more delicate wine. Think of this as a way to accelerate a wine that shows promise, or a way to make crap tolerable.
@Technoveg
Actually, aeration vastly improves the taste of well-aged wines as it does with younger wines because with well-aged wines, the aeration process allows the original minerals and other ingrediants to reinvigerate the wine.
Wow. And most people have to WORK for money.
A blender that helps wine breathe faster?! That's nothing! I have a blender that helps you shiit faster!
I use a Milk Frother, with pretty good results!
It's particularly effective if you haven't washed the blender very thoroughly since you used it to make a chocolate milkshake. This technique is best reserved for the rarified "under $3" wines, like Thunderbird or Night Train.
"Cucumbers are less solid than milk."
While technically correct based on the sole criteria of water content, I do believe I'd rather have a glass of milk thrown with great velocity at my face versus a cucumber.
But then again, that's just me...
I'll try my luck with the cucumber, it's softer than a glass and won't cut me if it breaks!
How fast? Is the blender set to "chop" or to "liquefy"? I'll have to remember this for my next sojourn to local "wine" dinners. Watching the hoity-toity French wine master short a fuse when I put the wine in flask and shake it — priceless!
That depends, is it a white or red wine?
Setting: A very deluxe restaurant:
Sommelier: "Ah, I see monsieur has chosen the Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits. An excellent choice, indeed!
"Perhaps monsieur would care to sniff the Hamilton Beach before we decant?"
Electromagnetic Waves? From charcoal? THAT does not sound right.
Why not just eat ALL of the peas instead of putting them in a centrifuge?
Yes electromagnetic waves, in this case infrared light that is radiated by any warm matter including charcoal. You can't see it, but aluminum foil does reflect most of it.
Perhaps he was working towards whirled peas.
You're right, Dan-
I need a refresher in the electromagnetic spectrum...IR is an electromagnetic wave...I did not think it all the way through...I must be tired...Good night!
Extreme agitation such as this is commonly used in blind tasting in order to confirm one's initial impression of a wine. This method will also kill the wine very quickly. If you were to blend an entire bottle you would need to drink it all within 3-4 minutes.
Actually, I think he's onto something. ... I probably won't be spinning wine in the blender, but I may pour 3-4 ounces in a stainless steel martini shaker (and shake vigorously for 15 sec) the next time I open a young, tight wine. ... For those of us who work in the wine biz/or have trained palates, it would be easy to compare/contrast the shaken wine to the one just out of the bottle. This could be a useful tool in certain applications. (My compliments to gcooper8 for the humorous "Hamilton Beach" reference.)