Tannins, polyphenolics, Yin and Yang

Hei, I have been busy again and it seems it won't get less in the near future. Anyway I am feeling much better since my last post even tho all the work. Its getting recently more and more Spring alike in Finland, which means more sun! Thats a good boost for a lot more work coming up and also encountering some more outside activities! YES!!

After I have been posting the last time always about some private stuff mixed together with some basic and advanced wine "wisdom" I think its time to go a little bit more into detail again. So today its all about tannins.

What the hell are tannins? Some of you might know what it is or from where they come from, others might just wonder cause all the time tannins is somewhere written on a bottle and so whatever. Then again other associate headache with tannins. Yeah well tannins are like a part of the Yin and Yang system of the wine. Why? To explain this I have to start from actually a very interesting question is: 'What is/are tannin/s?'

Red grapes
(c) Wikipedia; User Dragonflyir

Well the word tannin is under wine-knowing people used to describes all the polyphenolics in the wine. Okay no what are polyphenolics? Polyphenolics are a class of chemical substances that are produced by the grapes (normally much more in red than in white wines) and are a part of the plant defense/protection system. I guess you are getting no more confused. Alright lets make it easier to understand.
If you have a look onto a red grape. What do you see? Of course the red color! AHA! There you go! So polyphenolics are the red stuff in the grapes. Yes some of these polyphenolics are responsible for the color. In general the term polyphenolics in chemistry and biochemistry represents a huge and wide class of different chemical compounds (they do have some common similarities, otherwise it would be stupid to put them under all the same term, ain't?).

However you won't find polyphenolics not only the skin of the red grape, but also everywhere in the grape. Of course not all of them will give you a red color, some don't have any color, but nevertheless they contribute to the health and immune system of the plant and later also for our own health (I will come back to this in a short while).

Polyphenolics are substances that are produced by the plant in the secondary metabolism (its called like this because this metabolism is not primary necessary for the plant, but can be very very very advantageous; however it also cost the plant much more energy to produce these). Some other products of the secondary metabolism you might see in trees: Lignin is also a product of the secondary metabolism.

So polyphenolics are acting on one hand as radical scavenger. Radicals are generally produced in every organism under stress and can be harmful for the health. Therefore if you can somehow reduce these radicals its definitely good. On the other hand are working other polyphenolics like antibacterial and anti-fungal substance. Which means they either reduce the growth of harmful organisms or simply kills them (in high concentrations). A third advantage of polyphenolics is that some can absorb light (at least the one's which 'have' the color). We know all the results for having too much sun on our skin? Sunburn! So of course the plant tries also to reduce the sun influence to a certain degree. 

To summarize some traits of the polyphenolics and what they can do:
1) Act as radical scavenger

2) Act like antibacterial and anti-fungal substances

3) Act as shield against too much sun damaging effects

Coming back to tannins. I said: "Well the word tannin is under wine-knowing people used to describes all the polyphenolics in the wine". That is true but often wine people do intend to use the word tannins most of the time for the polyphenolics that are the skin of the grape! That is because tannins are highly concentrated in the skin of grapes, to protect the grape at all costs. Also these tannins will give later the wine the color and the taste. So here we come to the part about the "dark" nature of tannins. The tannins are generally know for a "bitter" taste and also causing for some people headache or even stomach problems. It is the balance and the composition of the amount of different tannins and different grapes (we just leave also reasons and occurrences during the fermentation aside for now) that results in this unbelievable dark nature of wine. 

I haven't read or heard a specific reason why some people react towards tannins with headache or even stomach problems. Even I sometimes can have troubles, that is depending on my personal feeling and stress level. So I guess as always it depends on the concentration of tannins that you uptake (okay now sounds like a medical description). On some days you are able to handle a lot and sometimes, well, less. However personally I think it also must have something to do with the receptors in our body that might react with different tannins differently (I don't have a number of how many different tannins are in nature, but believe me there are a lot. And "a lot" is not starting in hundreds).  

But we also know that tannins can have a "white" nature as well. And that is the health benefits, like radical scavenger and even more interesting immune system boosting and also helping to prevent heart-diseases. The latter part is also because of the so called polyphenolic "Resveratrol" which causes the so called "French Paradox" (that is seeing French people with quite - well formed - bellies and not suffering from heart diseases; cause they always have a glass of wine with food!!!). As we see here again you can never have just positive or negative of something. You will always have both. 

So I hope you know have much more knowledge about the tannins, polyphenolics, Yin and Yang in wine. I will now head out and enjoy the rest of the sunny day outside! Hope you do the same!
À bientôt mes amis!

PS: I most probably won't be able to post anything next week due to the fact that I will attend at the weeding of two of my best friends and also will have some guests staying Helsinki.  

Wine and "The Hunger Games"

Books!!!

M'enfin (finally!) I am back. Yeah it took like 2 weeks until I was ready to post something again. After my South Korean Co-worker Choi left I took 4 days off and had some nice Holidays. I needed some time to get my head free and also smell some fresh air after being stucked most of time in the office or at home (chores never waits....). I felt refreshed after these 4 days, however I got another bill to pay. The bill of overdoing it with my body the last weeks. So I didn't feel well and needed some more time to get back. So far I feel much better, still quite tired, however now looking forward to some Easter Holy-Days where I can rest some more. 

During the time after my 4 days of vacation I stayed most of the time (if not at work) at home and read a book. I haven't had the time to read a book or felt in any way to do so for a long time (reading so many publications at work makes you tired of seeing written pages), but after the 4 days I was trying it. I started to read "The Hunger Games". A book which is currently a major movie in the cinemas. To be honest I am not particular interested in books that get hyped up by advertisement or if people say you have to read it. I feel quite rebellious concerning books 'cause everybody has different taste (like with wines). However I must say even tho it is original a book for youngster/mid-adolescents it is really good! I read the first book in 4 days and now nearly reach the first half of the second book. I also watched the movie, which I must say didn't came close to the book, but hey its a movie and making a movie out of a book is - I guess - a very difficult thing. Anyway if you are interested in something easy and fast reading + a good story, then go for it. 

But enough of the book here, lets come back to something also very interesting: wine.
So yesterday when it started to snow again in Helsinki (we got like 20 cm of new snow the last two days) I suddenly felt like I needed something that reminds me of the summer. I picked up a foie gras du canard (its liver pâte from the duck), grabbed some fresh baked white bread and opened up a nice little bottle of Muscato d'Asti (a sweet white wine).

Bloc du foie gras du canard
(block of liver pâte from the duck)

Now here we have something new! What is a sweet wine, what is it good for and whats is a Muscadet? Uff a lot to explain and I try to make it short.
So a sweet wine is a wine that has a relatively low percentage of alcohol and a lot of remaining/rest-sugar. Why low percentage? Easy answer, because the alcohol is a product of the fermentation of the sugar of the grapes by the yeast/fungus and if you have a high rest-sugar in the wine, well then you definitely won't have too much alcohol in it. Also the higher the rest-sugar is in the wine the more toxic becomes the alcohol towards the yeast/fungus during the fermentation; so there is a limitation of the ability yeast to produce alcohol.

But how come that there is so much rest-sugar in it? Well that depends of some factors again. One is that the grapes have lost a lot of water because of some "noble rot" (Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that can infect wine grapes and cause loss of water) or that the weather conditions made the grapes skin fracturing.

Botrytis cinerea on Riesling grapes
(c) Wikipedia, owner Tom Maack

In the first case those wines are called "Auslese-Weine" (sorry only German word for this available). These wines are classified according to their alc/rest-sugar amount and also of the "kind" of berries that were used. The lowest classification is, if I am not mistaken "Beerenlese" and the highest is "Trockenbeerenauslese". Since you won't get so much juice out of grapes which have lost a lot of water already, you won't be able to produce many bottles. Vice versa this means that these bottles are not easy to get and very very expensive. In Germany you can pay between 8 - 20 € depending from which region and the producer (in Alko I saw a bottle of "Beerenlese" for 24 €, Mon Dieu! I don't wanna think of the price for the "Trocken-Beerenauslese"... ca va fait mal (translation: this is going to hurt)). Btw the classification of "Beerenlese and co." is a german one, so you won't find anything like this somewhere else. Of course other countries have different names for this, but the Germans have a lot of different sweet white wines since they are something like World Champions in White wine making. However please bear in mind that these sweet wine's are also called Dessert Wines due to their high rest-sugar. Normally you serve them together with desserts.
Just to mention here there is also something from Germany called an "Eiswein" (engl. translation: Ice wine). Because the grapes of this white wine have lost a lot of water thanks to frost and according to the rules the grapes are not allowed to be harvest before a certain day in January (I think its the 7th...not 100% sure). And obviously this one is even more rarely cause you have to gamble as a producer and hope you will get frost and a cold winter in January, so you won't gamble to high and use just some grape-vines.

But back the Sauternes and Muscadet. The Sauternes is a white wine from the "Sauternes"-region in France, and like with the "Beerenauslese" these grapes have lost a lot of water do to "noble-rot" (B. cinerea). The Muscadet on the other hand is made from grape variety 'Melon de Bourgogne'. However this wine is also sweet but if I a remember it right because the wine will "lay" on the yeast. While the yeast is disintegrated over time some compounds will get into the wine and give it special taste. These wines are a little less expensive than the others mentioned above.

Sweet white wine from
Alko Shop.

So the combination of foie gras and Muscadet is quite common in France (at least in the Southern parts) and both taste: Foie gras very fatty and Muscadet very sweet are quite well fitting to each other. However the Italian Muscato D'Asti (= Muscadet who has some carbon dioxide and sparkles) was from the taste sensation to strong personally. With all the carbon dioxide at the beginning I was not able to enjoy the foie gras. After the sparkling was gone it was very suitable to the foie gras.

Ca sera tous! (Thats all!) for today. Hope you enjoyed it! A bientôt mes amis!