Let me clarify wine & food pairing - Hydrophobic

I may have slightly mispoken during Alder Yarrow's presentation (which I thought was great), but one of the winemakers I have visited in Napa provided a chemical explanation for wine and food pairing, as well as general wine enjoyment, that I found extremely compelling. As we all know, the best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a larger one - and for Mr. Hendry, that is exactly what he has done. He is an accomplished engineer, having owned and worked for many large corporations, but continues to grow and produce wine on his family's vineyard as his passion. When I visited, he showed us many of the ways he continues to try to innovate in the wine production process, bringing in newer scientific methods to supplement many of the traditional methods for production.

One of the most interesting insights he had, however, was that wines, particularly good red wines, have many tannins. What he then discussed was that tannins are in fact highly hydro-phobic. What does this mean? Hydro-phobic, from those who remember their cellular biology, means that a compound is phobic or hates water, such as the inside of the double lipid cell-memberanes that exist in each of our cells in our bodies. As we all of course recall, the way that membrane is structured is such that the hydrophillic ends point to the inside and outside of the cell, the areas that are water filled, while the hydrophobic ends point towards each other to prevent water from passing fluidly through the cell memberane, such that our cells can control the amount of water in them at any given time. Why is this important? Well typically when people drink a lot of red wine, they then drink water in order to try to sober up and continue being able to taste the wine. Given that tanic wines are hydrophobic, however, I learned that drinking water would not work, since the hydrophobic tannins, which line our tongue after drinking red wine, would simply repel the water. Instead, as Mr. Hendy suggested, we eat olive oil or other foods high in lipds (also hydrophobic), and since "likes attract", this would mean that the hydrophobic lipids in olive oil would bind with the hydrophobic tannins on our tongue, thereby stripping them away. This would permit one to drink more red wine and continue to experience the complexity and taste. Take one step farther - he logically concluded that the reason why red wines and more fatty meals, such as red steak, often pair well together is that the fats, or lipids, in the steak peel the tannins off the tongue, allowing us to taste the wine more, and vice versa, even enhancing the flavor of the other.

So while Yarrow may have been right that there is no strict pairing of foods and wine, at least from one smart chemical engineering wine-maker, it would seem to make sense that the pairing of foods and wines with the right balance of chemicals should make each more enjoyable. But I leave it up to all of you to test it over your break.