 |
The Brain Diet
Research suggests that the
following edibles may enhance your mental abilities for
an hour or more.
Opinion
In defense of the first
genetically engineered pet.
Hi, Pedophile ... ! Meet Yur Worst
Nitemare :-)
In the dark and chatty world of avatars
and assumed identities, this cybercop is a virtual
Sybil, trolling for creeps and thieves.
Ben Franklin Slept
Here
New Mexico's high desert is a hotbed for
electrical storms. Where better to camp among 400
lightning rods?
 Defense Inflation
Meet the homeland security blimp,
flying high by 2006.
Why does wine go bad
once you've opened it? Do those wine-saver gadgets
actually work?
When a wine bottle is
uncorked, its contents are exposed to air, causing
them to oxidize. If you leave the open bottle out
long enough, your once-tasty beverage could end up
smelling like "sweaty socks or wet cardboard,"
says Philip Morace, president of the Sommelier
Society of America. Bacteria naturally present in
grapes can turn either the sugars in grape juice
or the alcohol in wine into acetic acid, giving it
a vinegar taste (and eventually producing a wine
vinegar). However, these bacteria need oxygen to
grow. Wine's fermentation process is usually
oxygen-free because of the large amount of carbon
dioxide produced when yeasts turn sugars into
alcohol. Uncorking the bottle introduces oxygen to
feed the bacteria, and the flavor begins to change
immediately. Not all changes are undesirable:
Expensive red wines, in particular, are said to
improve in the decanter and in the glass over a
short period. Some white wines oxidize in the
bottle over years, producing a rich rather than
sour quality. Still, oxygen is the enemy of most
wine, and there are several devices on the market
to put a halt to the process. One way is with a
vacuum pump that pumps air out of the bottle. A
nitrogen sealant is another preservation method.
Releasing nitrogen into the bottle displaces
oxygen, theoretically keeping it from tainting the
flavor. We tested a vacuum pump and a nitrogen
sealant (priced from $10 to $20, from Zyliss and
Cork Pops Inc., respectively) to see if these
gadgets work. It was a controlled test, though not
with a large enough sample of participants to be
truly scientific. We were interested to see
whether wine drinkers -- a couple of wine lovers
and several casual consumers -- could tell the
vacuum- and nitrogen-preserved wine from wine that
had simply been recorked after opening. The test
was conducted on a white German Riesling, opened
and preserved for a week (and, for some tasters,
two weeks), and an American pinot noir, preserved
for three days. In both cases, a fresh bottle was
opened for comparison when the preserved wine was
tasted. The wines were tasted "blind:" No one knew
what they were tasting until afterward. Among the
wine lovers, both were able to peg the fresh white
wine, and one immediately identified the fresh
red. They had a much harder time sorting through
the preserved wines and the wine that had merely
been recorked. The casual drinkers could not
identify any of the wines consistently, nor agree
on which was their favorite. Although the sample
was small, the results suggest that for mid-priced
wines (over $10, under $20) the average wine buyer
might be better off either polishing off the
bottle when it's opened or quickly recorking and
refrigerating it for a few days.
|
|
|
|
|
Why does wine go bad once
you've opened it? Do those wine-saver gadgets actually
work?
• Answer
Advertisement
Get 2 FREE TRIAL issues of
Popular Science!
Click here!
Manage Your Subscription to Popular
Science Magazine:
Already a Popular
Science subscriber? Make a payment, check your
payment status, review your subscription dates, renew a
subscription, change your address and much more through
our
online subscriber services.
|
|
