How Do Oak and Yeast Magically Transform Wine and Whisky?

Natalie MacLean
Apr2nd

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Introduction

How does oak aging change wine and whisky flavour, colour and texture? What do glass, gears, and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation? Why is yeast such an essential tool in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Adam Rogers, author of the New York Times bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

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Highlights

  • What are some of the traits that new yeasts are being developed for?
  • Why does sugar deserve the title of most important molecule in the world?
  • How is human saliva used in the production of Chicha, one of the oldest types of alcoholic beverage?
  • What is microbial terroir and how does it affect the flavour profile of fermented drinks?
  • Why does Adam describe distillation as the apotheosis of human life on Earth?
  • How does the process of distillation work?
  • What is the most important thing we can learn from the alchemists?
  • Is the shape of a distillation still important to the process?
  • What’s happening to spirits while they’re aging in barrels?
  • Have there been successful innovations to age wine and spirits more quickly?
  • Why do some people lose their sense of smell after a concussion?
  • What new developments in the science of booze surprised Adam since Proof was published in 2014?

 

Key Takeaways

  • How does oak aging change wine and whisky flavour, colour and texture?
    • When you’re drinking whisky, and it’s that beautiful amber color, that’s all from the wood. It’s completely clear when it goes into a barrel and it’s brown when it comes out. So color is part of what changes, and all those flavours. Different spirits have different rules about how they age. So wine goes into new oak, bourbon goes into new oak, single malt whisky goes into old oak. It has to have been used for something else, a second fill. So they’ll use a bourbon cask or a port cask or sherry cask. That’ll get the flavor of whatever else has been in it. In the process of aging, as the temperature goes up and down, the pores in the wood open and close. As they open, the liquid gets drawn into that layer inside of the wood, and then gets pushed back out. So there’s this kind of back-and-forth process, which is why so many of the experimental attempts to accelerate the aging process use heat to try to cycle it faster. And it’s also why people drink more young American whiskies than European whiskies.
  • What do glass, gears, and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation?
    • Distillation was developed in the first two to 300 years of the Common Era. People were starting to transform naturally occurring phenomena into a technology that could exist in a temple or in the home. Distillation is one of those technologies, along with a lot of automatons and the simple machines, gears, screws and the steam engines. They’re figuring out glass, ceramics, metal.
  • Why is yeast such an essential tool in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change?
    • Yeasts are a workhorse organism in laboratories because it’s very easy to change their traits and genetics. They share DNA with each other, and when they grow, they mutate very quickly. Generation to generation change. So you can use classic animal or microbial husbandry techniques to change them as well. This can become especially important as climate change changes the regions that are important to wine. Places like Napa and Sonoma become too hot to grow the kind of grapes that they grow. Or as places like Australia get super hot and they still want to grow grapes and varietals that favor a cooler climate. You can develop yeast that can respond to those stresses and still produce more of the flavor molecules that you want out of those particular strains.

 

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Yeast are also workhorse organisms in laboratories because it’s very easy to change their traits. - Adam Rogers Adam Rogers Click to tweet

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Fermentation would happen without us, but distillation requires human intervention. - Adam Rogers Adam Rogers Click to tweet

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The theater of wine, almost independent of what’s actually in your glass, the fun of the environment can be so much of the enjoyment of the experience. That is part of why this is so great. - Adam Rogers Adam Rogers Click to tweet

 

About Adam Rogers

Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, where he writes about technology, culture, and the ways they overlap. Prior to joining BI, Adam was a longtime editor and writer at WIRED, where his article “The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress” was the second-most read thing on the entire internet in 2015.

Adam’s WIRED feature story on a mysterious fungus that grows on whisky warehouses won a AAAS/Kavli science journalism award — and led to his 2014 New York Times bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze. Adam is also the author of the 2021 book Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern. He has also written for Alta, the Atlantic, National Geographic, the New York Times, Slate, and Smithsonian, and may be the only journalist to attend both San Diego Comic-Con and the White House Correspondents Dinner.

 

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Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How does oak aging change? Wine and whiskey flavor. Color and texture. What do glass gears and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation? And why is yeast such an essential tool in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in part two of our chat with Adam Rogers. You don’t need to have listened to part one first from last week, but if you missed it, go back and have a listen. After you finish this one, by the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover why sugar deserves the title of the most important molecule in the world. Yes, it’s beating out water, in Adam’s opinion. Speaking of water, how human saliva is used in the production of Chika, one of the oldest types of alcoholic beverages. What? microbial terroir is and how it affects the flavor profile of fermented drinks. How the process of distillation actually works. The most important thing we can learn from the alchemists, whether the shape of a distillation still is important to the process, even that little dent in the corner.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:21 What’s happening to spirits while they age in barrels? The major innovations to aging wine and whiskeys more quickly, and why some people lose their sense of smell after a concussion. Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started. Welcome to episode 331 city TV’s Breakfast Television, which airs nationally to 3.3 million viewers, recently did a complete makeover with a new set, new location and new hosts Dina Pugliese and Tim Bolen. I’ve known Deena and Tim for years, so it was like a homecoming when they asked me to be on the show shortly after their launch.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:47 I’ll share the wines, whiskeys, and tips that we discussed with you now. Spring is in the air and with it comes a sense of renewal. So what better way to toast a fresh start than with some tasty wines and spirits? And who better to lead the toast than our favorite drinks expert? Natalie MacLean, editor of Canada’s largest wine review site at Natalie MacLean. Com. Dina and Tim, it’s great to raise a glass with the two of you in your new roles on this beautiful new set. Did you know that new beginnings are just like wine and whiskey barrels? They’re full of promise, occasionally under pressure, but always improving with time. And the good news is that unlike the barrels, the two of you won’t need to be stored in a cool, dark place to reach your full potential. So I’ve grouped these wines and whiskies in twos in honor of you as the dynamic new duo, so feel free to smell or taste these first two wines from the Niagara Winery.

Bighead. Now, I immediately thought of you when I selected Big Head wines—not for ego, but for your imagination and the big creative ideas that you’re bringing to this show. In fact, the versatile Chardonnay reminds me of Dina: from producer to entertainment reporter, and now back to hosting. And like Dina, this wine is zesty with its aromas of crunchy golden apple and warm buttered toast. And I’m not saying that Dina smells like warm buttered toast—though if she did, it would definitely be artisanal sourdough. On the palate, this Chardonnay is rich and complex, with a beautiful mineral backbone that gives it elegance and longevity. I’d pair it with Spring Awakening risotto: made with tender asparagus, fresh peas, and delicate lemon zest that brings out the wine’s crisp acidity, all finished with shavings of aged Parmigiano-Reggiano that echoes the wine’s complexity.

The robust Cabernet Sauvignon Select reminds me of your career trajectory, Tim. It starts bold—if a little rough around the edges—then continues to develop with complexity and depth as it opens up. Just like your journey from sports reporting to anchoring this show with Dina. This Cabernet is bursting with notes of black currant, cedar, and a hint of dark chocolate.

There’s a wonderful structure to this wine, with firm tannins that will help it age beautifully. I’d pair this with New Horizons beef tenderloin: crusted with cracked black pepper and fresh herbs, seared to perfection with a caramelized exterior and tender, juicy center, served alongside roasted root vegetables that bring out the wine’s earthy notes. Did you know that Niagara-on-the-Lake has a unique microclimate created by Lake Ontario that helps protect the vines from extreme temperature fluctuations? This allows winemakers to produce these exceptional cool-climate wines with both power and elegance.

Next up we have these Tread Softly wines from Australia that are brand new to the market here this month. Not only are they certified sustainable and bottled in lightweight glass, but they also plant a tree for every case sold. So far, they’ve planted 2.5 million trees, the equivalent of taking 35,000 cars off the road. Wow. We’re going green here. Tim, in order of your Irish heritage, the Pinot Grigio is crisp and refreshing with notes of green apple and lime zest.

It’s lighter in alcohol than many Australian wines but still full of character. I pair this with Gentle Beginnings seafood ceviche, where delicate pieces of fresh scallops and snapper are lightly cooked in lime juice, tossed with crisp cucumber, ripe avocado, and fragrant cilantro—together matching the wine’s bright, clean profile. Their silky-smooth Pinot Noir is all about ripe cherries and subtle spice, with a lingering finish that stays with you long after the last drop—much like Dina’s smile after the show is over.

Oh, and a fascinating fact about Pinot Noir: it’s one of the oldest grape varieties in the world, dating back more than 2,000 years. It’s also one of the most genetically unstable grapes, which is why you find it in so many different clones and expressions around the world. I’d pair this with duck breast—seared until the skin is crackling-crisp, then sliced thin to reveal a perfectly pink interior—served with a cherry reduction sauce that mirrors the wine’s fruit notes and wild mushroom risotto that complements its earthy undertones.

Next up, I have the superb Reserva 120 wines from Santa Rita in Chile.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:39 The Sauvignon Blanc is bursting with lemon zest—bold and confident, like Dina. As someone who thrives on a fast-paced morning show, the *120* commemorates the 120 resistance fighters who battled the invading Spanish army to secure Chile’s national independence in 1823. The winery hid them in their cellars and saved their lives, so these wines aren’t just a taste of Chile—they’re also a sip of history.

This vibrant and refreshing Sauvignon Blanc, with tropical fruit notes and a clean, crisp finish, would go well with an Italian-inspired Welcome Back Linguine alle Vongole: tender clams gently steamed open in a fragrant broth of white wine, garlic, and fresh parsley, then tossed with al dente pasta finished in a briny, aromatic cooking liquid. Oh my lord—getting hungry and thirsty! The bright acidity of this wine cuts through the richness of the dish while complementing the delicate flavors of the seafood—much like how Dina’s vibrant personality has been lighting up TV screens since 2006.

The Santa Rita Cabernet Sauvignon 120 Reserva offers aromas of blackcurrant and cedar. It’s modern with a classic twist—much like your bow ties and sartorial sensibility, Tim. I’d pair this with a Homecoming Celebration Osso Buco: veal shanks slowly braised in a rich tomato sauce with vegetables and herbs until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender, served with saffron risotto that soaks up all those amazing flavors—a nod to your Woodbridge roots and Italian background, Dina.

Now we’re shifting to spirits. In 1972, the Forty Creek Distillery opened and—more recently—was named Whisky Maker of the Decade at the Canadian Whisky Awards. Tim, you attended Brock University in the heart of Niagara wine country. Well, Forty Creek Copper Pot has intense toffee aromas like bourbon but with spicy rye notes. The whisky gets educated through extended barrel aging, creating incredible complexity—much like your morning commentary, Tim.

Did you know that Canadian whisky must be aged for at least three years in wooden barrels? Forty Creek takes this much further with their special aging process, creating their distinctive smooth-yet-complex profile. I’d pair this with Fresh Perspective Maple-Glazed Bacon: thick-cut artisanal bacon slowly baked with pure Canadian maple syrup until it achieves that perfect balance of sweet, salty, smoky, and crisp—an irresistible accompaniment to this premium whisky.

We also have the Forty Creek Honey Spiced Whisky. It’s spiced but subtly sweet, hitting the middle ground between bourbon and rye. Serve it with lemonade for a refreshing drink as we head into warmer weather.

And for our grand finale, we have the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey. Originally developed in Canada in the mid-1980s and has become one of the country’s most popular whiskey brands, it’s still made in their old Montreal distillery—a blend of Canadian whiskey with natural cinnamon flavor to give it that fiery kick. Much like your punny humor, Dina, not to mention your curling iron karaoke—you and it bring warmth and fun to any occasion.

The brand new Fireball Apple Cinnamon ready-to-drink format brings together ripe, juicy, sparkling apple juice with the cinnamon spice of Fireball. It’s the perfect combo for pure refreshment. Here we come, summer! I’d pair this with Brave New World Dark Chocolate Fondue, where the richness of the melted bittersweet chocolate is enhanced with a hint of cayenne pepper to mirror the whiskey’s spiciness, served with fresh strawberries, banana slices, and buttery pound cake cubes for dipping into the velvety, decadent mixture.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:45 So, my final words of wisdom. I’d like to offer a toast. Here’s to embracing change with open arms and open hearts with full glasses for brand new starts. All right, so I’m always looking for your suggestions for upcoming segments on Citi TV’s breakfast television, CTV Morning Live, The Social Global’s morning show, and Morning Live about drinks for spring, Easter, Earth Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day barbecue and Canada Day. So if you have wine, spirits, beer, cocktails or mixed drinks to suggest whether they’re alcoholic or not, please let me know. Meanwhile, I’m reviewing my favorite drinks over on Instagram at Natalie MacLean wine. Connect with me there. Back to today’s guest. One of you will win a copy of Adam’s terrific second book, Full Spectrum How the Signs of Color Made Us Modern. And I’m pleased to announce two winners of the book on Tuscany, From Brunello to Bulgari. Tales from the Heart of Italy. They are Don Bogart from Tillsonburg, Ontario, and Lucia from Vancouver. I also still have two copies of Fiona morrison’s Ten Great Wine Families, a tour through Europe, and two of Rosemary George’s book The Wines of Languedoc.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:03 These are gorgeous books with full color photos and maps. You can live anywhere in the world to win these, by the way. All you have to do is email me and let me know you’d like to win. I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir wine, which on fire rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. I’d be happy to send you a beautifully designed, personally signed book. Plates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean 331. The paperback usually arrives within a day or two of ordering. The book and audiobook are instantly available. Magic. Okay, on with the show. You’ve noted that different yeast strains are designed to create different flavors.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:11 Some yeasts now will lower alcohol. I’ve heard of power yeasts that will produce turbo alcohol high alcohol, although that’s going out of fashion, especially in wine. Are there other things that new yeasts are being bred to do?

Adam Rogers 00:14:24 Yeah, it’s a tough row to hoe. Wrong substrate, I know, but because of concerns about GMOs.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:30 Right. And those are banned in the EU. Right.

Adam Rogers 00:14:33 So if you’re trying to make wine there, they’ll get mad at you if you have a genetically modified yeast. But the reason that yeast are also a workhorse organism in laboratories is that they’re very easy to change traits, to change their genetics. They share DNA with each other. When they grow, they tend to mutate very quickly. Generation to generation will change. So you can use kind of classic animal or microbial husbandry techniques to change them as well, to look for particular traits. This is, I think, going to become especially important as climate change changes the regions that are important wine producers, as places like Napa and Sonoma become too hot to grow the kind of grapes that they grow, or as places like Australia get super hot and they still want to grow grapes and varietals that really kind of favor a cooler climate generally, or scenic to that, that maybe you can develop yeasts that can respond to those stresses and still produce more of the flavor, chemical, the flavor molecules that you want out of those particular strains, you have to identify what those molecules are.

Adam Rogers 00:15:33 That’s a hard part. That would be one approach. I mean, it’s sort of like it’s that or or Napa cedes all of its importance to Washington State. Those are your choices.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:43 So yeah. Yeah. No, that would be great if they could come up with something like that. And still, to protect the signature of Napa or wherever you’re talking about moving on to sugar, you describe sugar as the most important molecule on Earth. That’s a bold, bold claim. Adam, can you explain why sugar deserves this title over other contenders like, say, water?

Adam Rogers 00:16:03 Yeah, sure. I’m obviously being provocative in that statement, but to me, waters, medium waters, the thing where all this chemistry happens, but the other stuff, the other chemicals are message and sugar, especially because it has so many different functions. Sugar is another storage of another way to store energy. It’s a complicated molecule. The molecular bonds keep a lot of energy tied up in there, so you can eat it, and it gives you a lot of calories of vim and vigor for any animal, not just us, but also because it can be structural.

Adam Rogers 00:16:29 You can assemble sugar molecules like Lego pieces to build all kinds of other stuff. One of those things is starch. Starch is a big, complicated polysaccharide. Poly is many saccharine to sugar, but if you do a few little tweaks of those molecules, if you assemble sugar molecules in a slightly different way, you get cellulose, which is wood or stuff that makes up plants. It’s the most, I think, the most common molecule on Earth. Maybe this record looks change, and if you assemble it again slightly differently, you add a nitrogen in there. You get something called chitin, which is the stuff that crab shells, crab and lobster shells. And it’s also the cell wall in yeast. Yeast have chitin, which is kind of weird that they have that. Another super common on Earth, super common molecule for life. So these are all sort of sugar and sugar derived, even DNA, even genetic material is a sugar backbone. That’s the structural part of our genetic material is a sugar.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:19 Is that the ribose?

Adam Rogers 00:17:20 Yeah, exactly.

Adam Rogers 00:17:21 That’s right. The ribose and deoxyribonucleic acid. That’s right.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:24 There you go. Okay. Yeah. All right. So we’ve covered sugar well enough. Now let’s go on to be here for three hours. Fermentation. Let’s get to some of the action here. Some of the oldest alcoholic beverages in history like chicha. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Relied on human saliva to start fermentation. That just caught my eye. Like, how did that work? It’s weird. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:17:48 So you and I and a lot of other animals can digest starch. We have an enzyme in our saliva called amylase. ASC is the enzyme part. The animal is the starch part. In this case, that breaks down starch into the sugars that we can digest. Yeast cannot do this. They can’t digest starch. And huge amounts of the sugar in plants is locked up as starch. So if you want to take the sugar in a plant, especially in a grain like a corn or a barley and ferment it, you have to simplify the sugars.

Adam Rogers 00:18:19 You got to break them apart. And there are a bunch of different ways to do that. The malting process is a way to do that. Asian spirits use Koji is another fungus that can digest the starch. Turn it into sugar before the yeast get to it. Chicha, which is a South American corn based fermented product. The way they would make it is that basically women, because a lot of this production stuff was seen as women’s work until it was industrialized, just like the rest of human industrial history would sort of sit and chew the corn in there, like masticate it in their mouth. So the amylase in their starch would break down in their saliva, would break down the starch into sugars, and then they would kind of spit it out and make a little patty of this blue corn and let it dry in the sun. So get rid of the cooties, right? Basically. And then they would use that and ferment that into the drink. I’ve actually never had it. And I really want to try it because it sounds weird as hell.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:12 It does. You need to have one of those village visits or whatever. Another story for your next book. And we often think of fermentation as yeast turning sugar and alcohol. But you write about the microbial terroir, which we may have already touched on. What do you mean by the microbial terroir?

Adam Rogers 00:19:29 Two things. Yeast make a lot of other chemicals in that digestive process. That transformation of sugar doesn’t only create alcohol, it creates other alcohols other than ethanol, which is the one that we think of most often. And also other chemicals that have flavors and aromas. So what we were talking about, that yeasty flavor that a pet will have or that a sour beer will have, those are those other molecules making their presence known. You know, you can get a yeast strain that has very few of those. So you have something that doesn’t show that. Or you can get a wild type yeast that’s really crazy and, you know, go nuts. But also there are other kinds of microbes in the environment that you can also allow into your fermentation.

Adam Rogers 00:20:11 This is especially true in rums, especially true in rum agricole, rum agricole ferments and then distillers clear sugar cane juice. Most of the rum, the sort of Bacardi type rum that you, you know, you get at the target or whatever is usually using molasses as the substrate. So when you’re making sugar, you’re making you get the white sugar that comes out that you put in your coffee or whatever. And then molasses is a byproduct of it. What do you do with that? Well, you can ferment it and distill it, make rum. You can also just take that cane juice and do that. But when you do, you have to go really fast because it’s pure microbe food. And so not just the yeast that you want will settle on it, but other yeasts and other stuff from the environment will settle on it too. And in fact, some of them will make flavors so crazy that there are some rum makers who will actually scrape the gunk out of the still, bury it for a while, let it grow.

Adam Rogers 00:21:01 Like all kinds of weird stuff, like the blooms that, you know, if you if something goes bad in your refrigerator and you’re like, oh, I’ve got a little colony or whatever, I better throw it away. They want those to happen, and then they’ll actually mix some of that back into the product. There’s nothing toxic in it, and all the weird stuff gets killed, but you get the flavors.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:17 Okay. What flavors would that blue gunk make? Would it be just sort of subtle? Feral. Underlying.

Adam Rogers 00:21:24 Is a good word there? Yeah. Have you ever had a rum that you describe as, like, funky and grass like.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:30 No, but I like that word. I can use it now.

Adam Rogers 00:21:32 It’s those. Are you tasting? You’re like, wow, that’s really, that’s got like a they can be almost meaty, like they’re very umami flavors. They juxtapose really interestingly with the sweetness of a rum. There are a few rum makers, especially so not the Jamaican rum makers as much, but like the Barbadian rum makers, some of the other islands, the other Caribbean rums where you’re tasting, you’re like, whoa, that is weird.

Adam Rogers 00:21:53 Like that is not a daiquiri rum. That’s something else. You know? That’s like, you want to make a teapot out of that or something real like aggressive. What a story. A teapot. It’s a rum. About a half dollar sized slice. Cutouts of the outside of a lime muddled into some syrup, and then just a dollop of rum. It’s one of my favorite rum drinks. It’s. They’re great.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:13 So that sounds great. Very funky too. So again, the process really clarified things for me, the organization of your book, because I focus mostly on wine and not a lot on spirits, though I’m really keen to learn. So distillation. The way you positioned it to me seems like it moves, you know, a step beyond fermentation. So distilled wine gives us brandy, distilled beer gives us whiskey. And you describe distillation poetically as the apotheosis of human life on earth. Now, what do we mean by that?

Adam Rogers 00:22:45 Perhaps again, I’m being somewhat provocative when I say that.

Adam Rogers 00:22:47 Here’s why I think that it’s one of the first, really among the first. And it comes at a moment of intense technological development for humanity. So depending on how you believe these histories, distillation gets developed sometimes sort of in the first 2 to 300 years of the common era. And it comes out of a moment when people are just becoming the engineers that we are when they’re really starting to It transform naturally occurring phenomena into a technology that can exist in a temple or in the home. And distillation is one of those technologies, along with a lot of automatons and sort of all of the like the simple machines, the gears and the screws and the steam engines. The earliest moments of saying, hey, if I dig up enough of those really interesting dirt and cook it long enough to turn it into this really hard stuff and combine it with, like, if I melt sand, it turns into this clear thing that’s really hard. It’ll break, but it’s also, you know, clear and beautiful. They’re figuring out glass.

Adam Rogers 00:23:50 They’re figuring out ceramics, they’re figuring out metal. They’re figuring out gears. They’re figuring out all of the things that are the underpinnings of the built environment today. And distillation is one of those distillations happens in those same labs, basically. And those same people are figuring that out, too.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:05 I love that just a hive of human achievement and curiosity. As you noted, fermentation would happen without us. But distillation requires human intervention. You call distillation of technology, but not chemistry. What’s the difference to you?

Adam Rogers 00:24:20 Well, chemistry is something that also probably happens. You discover biochemistry. Those are processes that human scientists can unpack and then take advantage of. But in order for a distillation to happen, distillation is a fundamentally a separation technology. It’s like a strainer or a centrifuge, you know, using gravity, spin things around. The heavy stuff goes to the bottom, right. The heavy stuff goes through the operation. Evaporation is one. Right. So still is basically using evaporation using vapor pressure. What that means is you heat stuff at different temperatures, different liquids turn into steam turned into a vapor.

Adam Rogers 00:24:56 And what it still does is heat this mass of fermented liquid and the lighter molecules turn into vapor. First go up the still and then go over the top so the heavy stuff stays behind. The lighter stuff goes over. The lighter stuff tends to be the alcohols, and the first run of that is like methanol, and things will make you go blind and kill you. And so you don’t want to use that. Don’t throw that away or use that for cleaning. And then you keep the middle part, the center cut that comes out. So in order to make that happen, you have to know how to manipulate metal. You have to know how to manipulate fire. You have to know how to manipulate cold because you have to chill that vapor coming out over the top. You have to understand a whole lot of basic physics and chemistry, and then metallurgy and design to build this thing that becomes what we know is, is still.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:42 Right? Right. Oh, fascinating. The early distillers, the alchemists, were trying to separate the spirit or soul from an object from its physical body.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:52 So some were trying to get gold from lead. And what was the most important thing you think the alchemists taught us?

Adam Rogers 00:25:58 I love the alchemist. I think they get a bad rap. We think of alchemists as being, you know, flimflam guys basically as being grifters, because you can’t make gold and can’t make lead into gold. But the practices that they developed, the methods, the methodologies still became critical for chemistry and became critical for physics, even if what they were doing was nonsense, you know, largely. Well, two things. One, I think it’s important that the at least this story of how distillation was created. It was created in a lab of a woman scientist in the sort of 200 common era or so woman named Maria. The U.S. is how she’s accounted for and like, because the history here is so old and not reliable. Did she really exist? Did she really do it? But maybe. But it’s one of the stories that we tell here. That distillation was invented by this woman in her lab that she had in Alexandria.

Adam Rogers 00:26:48 I also think, and this one’s just me. I’ve known a lot of, like, post-docs and graduate students and in the sciences, and they’re always fermenting and distilling stuff. And I just assume that, like, Maria was trying to distill the spirits of the fundamental gold that existed in the philosopher’s Stone or whatever, and then her students were like, buddy, what if we put beer in there?

Adam Rogers 00:27:10 What are you grad students you think will happen right.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:13 Around the world and through time trying to make alcohol?

Adam Rogers 00:27:16 That’s my assumption. That’s my working assumption.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:18 Yes, that’s a good assumption. Absolutely. And her name goes on in one of the Olympic stills, the Bon Marie.

Adam Rogers 00:27:25 Bon Maria, the double boiler. Right. I mean, you might have one in your kitchen, I wonder, in my kitchen. And it’s also a lab. It’s still in labs today. It’s still called a Bon Marie. And it’s named after her. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:33 Maria’s bath or his bath? Ice baths. So I know that distillers, they all have their secret recipes and whatever, but I think it was in you mentioned somewhere where when they tried to replicate a still because they last 30 or 40 years before they sort of give out and have to be replaced.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:50 They replicate like small dents because they believe that. Is there any scientific evidence, really, that a small dent, putting it back in there is going to affect the taste of the spirit?

Adam Rogers 00:28:01 No, it’s one of those things that has both intuitive power. You can understand how it might be true. Like. Yeah. Okay, I buy that because inside this still. As this heating process is happening, especially in the batch kind of stills that like single malt uses and craft distillers will use where there’s sort of an onion shape. It’s got that like ball like this. And then the top, the tall stock. Right. So inside this part stuff is all heating. And like the vapors go up and then they condense on the inside of that and drip back down. And so the different shapes allow different flavors to make their way out. You can have a tall skinny one of those. Or when you get a lot of oily flavors and little fat one because stuff stays in the bottom for longer. So.

Adam Rogers 00:28:37 Sure. Has anybody ever tested it? Well, no, but commercially they test it. So there are stories about, for example, as a business, the single malt whisky business in Scotland has its ups and downs. And in the last decade or decade and a half, there was an attempt at a lot of rapid expansion to try to deal with the market in China. And they kind of messed a lot of stuff up and doing it. But one of the things that there’s a famous story of a distillery that tried to expand by basically replicating the stills the same exact same shape, because there’s only 1 or 2 real steelmakers at that level, and they keep all the records, you know. So they just built two more of the stills just down the road, but they got something wrong because the stuff that came out of those stills didn’t taste like the stuff that was in their original ones, and they didn’t know what they had to, like, change what they made, change the labeling because it just didn’t taste the same.

Adam Rogers 00:29:26 There was something different about the location, about the stills, about how they heated them, about who touched the grain. For nobody knows. But these little differences manifest in the flavor that you get at the other end.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:38 Well that’s cool. And then you’ve noticed some really weird things have been distilled just to finish off this. Why are they distilling things like foie gras, mushrooms, and wet donuts?

Adam Rogers 00:29:48 Well, okay, so there’s two groups here that you do the donuts because it’s just a source of sugar that I’ve tasted that you’re just proving that any source of sugar can be run still. Because what we think of in the, in the US as moonshine is that like good old country boys up in the holler with their, like, backwoods still making stuff. That has evolved into a corn based whiskey called bourbon in the United States. But really, those guys were probably just distilling from white sugar, just whatever sugar source they could get any kind of fruit, anything, just to have enough sugar that they could get enough yield off of it.

Adam Rogers 00:30:17 Somebody was having fun, but they did it with donuts because they’re so sugary to prove that you could do it. Tasted terrible.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:23 Tasted terrible. There’s definitely a hole in the middle, I’m sure, for the mid palate anyway.

Adam Rogers 00:30:27 That’s right. You got a good nose, delicious finish, but something missing. I’m friendly with a distiller named Lance winters. He’s got a small, medium sized distillery here in the Bay Area in California called Saint George Spirits. And he was doing it as an experimental process to try to understand distilling and get at kind of what’s powerful about distilling, both as a metaphor and also as a technology, is that it really gets at the fundamental essence of something. My experience of this is usually like, if you have the best apricot, eau de vie will taste like the best apricot you’ve ever had, like the specs for an apricot. You know, like the apricot that you had when you were 12. On a perfect summer day that you picked off a tree that was perfectly ripe and that you were having the best day of your life with your family, and you had that apricot and you’re like, that’s what a great apricot tastes like.

Adam Rogers 00:31:12 Because distillation will get rid of all the extraneous stuff and just get to the center of something, which is also the metaphor for distilling. Right? So Lance was trying to do that with other flavors to see if he could capture something fundamental about a foie gras, or about seaweed, or about a mushroom. And I tasted the seaweed. One was really kind of a wild experience because it was like being on the ocean.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:37 Was it.

Adam Rogers 00:31:38 Tasting? It was like getting hit with a wave, you know, like standing there and being hit with a wave. It really did that. And he knew it too. He was a he was hilarious. He was like, yeah, I know I got that one right. Like he knew it. So it was possible.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:52 Wow. It could commercialize that.

Adam Rogers 00:31:53 I think it was idiosyncratically. I got to tell you.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:58 Oh, I see the consistency would be an issue. Yeah. All right. On to aging. What’s happening? While the spirits are changing dramatically while they’re aging, what are the key chemical reactions that are happening with that barrel?

Adam Rogers 00:32:12 Yeah, this is really interesting.

Adam Rogers 00:32:14 And it’s something that’s hard to get to the center of because the people who are the best at it keep it a secret. This is like IP because it’s so critical to what huge companies do with their business. But one of the things I love to do in a distillery, if I get the opportunity, is to taste the white dog, taste what comes out of the still, the first thing that comes out of the still.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:35 Oh, the head before you get to the middle.

Adam Rogers 00:32:38 No no no no no. Taste what they’re going to put into a barrel but just before it goes into the barrel.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:42 Okay. Gotcha.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:43 Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:32:43 Because the head will kill you, but.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:45 Right, right.

Adam Rogers 00:32:47 I would still be. I’m sure it tastes interesting.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:49 Methanol is a little bit sweeter. Research?

Natalie MacLean 00:32:51 Yeah, they call it a white dog. Okay.

Adam Rogers 00:32:53 In the US, it’s called white Dog. Yeah, because it is everything that the spirit is going to be except the aging. First of all, it also tastes good super high alcohol when it comes out of the still, but you can still taste it and it can taste like some acid, like popcorn, or like, you know, cereal, breakfast cereal flavors, really interesting flavors that sometimes get covered by the wood.

Adam Rogers 00:33:14 You know, wine has this I was going to say, has this problem too. Some people like it too. But that thing of like the classic the over oaked, buttery Chardonnay.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:20 Yeah, ketchup of the wine world. Like oak.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:23 Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:33:23 It’s the classic example of like, okay, well, I’m only tasting the wood. I’m only tasting the coconut lactose. Is that come out of that inside surface of that new French oak, because French oak is a really oily, coconutty, buttery, like all these unctuous flavors come off the inside.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:39 American Oak was the coconutty one. But is it French oak, too?

Adam Rogers 00:33:43 I always get this backwards.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:45 Well, in wine it could be different in spirits. French oak is like vanilla spice and sort of closer grained, whereas American oak for wine is is usually sweeter coconutty. And then again, different woods could be imparting different things.

Adam Rogers 00:33:59 And you’re going to be more right about this than I am for sure. Well, I’ll tell you the part of this that I was dopey about when you’re drinking whiskey and it’s that beautiful brown color that’s all from the wood.

Adam Rogers 00:34:08 It is completely clear when it goes into a barrel and it’s brown when it comes out. So color is part of what changes. And also all those flavors and different spirits have different rules about how they age. So wine goes into new oak, bourbon goes into new oak, single malt whiskey goes into old oak. It has to have been used for something else. Second fill. So they’ll use a bourbon cask or a port cask or a sherry cask. So that’ll get the flavor of whatever else has been in it. Because the process of aging, as the temperature goes up and down, the pores in the wood open and close. So they’ll open, the liquid gets drawn into that layer, the inside layer of the wood and then gets pushed back out. So there’s this kind of back and forth process, which is why so many of the experimental attempts to accelerate that process use heat to try to cycle it faster. And it’s part of why people buy tradition more than anything else. Will have younger American whiskies than European whiskies, or certainly very young whiskies that’ll come out of the tropics, let’s say Indian whiskeys or Australian whiskeys where they’re just doing like three years of super fast cycling in and out of the wood.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:15 Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:16 Wow. Have there been I mean, it’s kind of the perhaps secret people would love to get or master, but maybe haven’t. But has there been any successful experiments done to age wine and spirits even more quickly?

Natalie MacLean 00:35:31 I mean, it depends on what you think of as success.

Adam Rogers 00:35:34 Yeah, still tastes good.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:37 Doesn’t taste confected.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:38 People do it. And there are some brands.

Adam Rogers 00:35:40 There’s a company called Lost Spirits that has some technological, a bunch of different sort of technological approaches to doing it faster. This becomes a matter of personal preference. I usually don’t think it works. So, like the classic move is for a small distillery to do a faster turnaround by using a smaller barrel. So smaller barrel means there’s more exposure. But to my palate, the problem with that is that you get all of the extractive flavors from the wood, but none of the oxidation. So the other thing that happens over time is that oxidizes inside the barrel, so you don’t get any of the oxidative flavors. You do get all the extractives.

Adam Rogers 00:36:13 It tastes like green wood to me. To me that doesn’t work as well. But there’s a business case to do it because they want to get product out the door. I think that’s less common now than it was when I was writing the book.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:22 Sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:23 Well, they also throw wood chips into some cheaper wines just for that extraction. Even faster. Cheaper. So.

Adam Rogers 00:36:30 Right. Teabags, a little sawdust, right?

Natalie MacLean 00:36:32 Oh, really? Tea bags with sawdust. Oh, that’s really gross thought. But I guess they’re competing in a certain price category and. Yeah. All right, well, let’s just motor through some of this because the time is flying. But this is so fascinating. Smell and taste are most direct scents. As you say, when we smell wine, spirits, parts of our brain, dangling neurons, or touching the aroma molecules. It’s the only part of our brain that is in direct contact with the sensory world. Doesn’t get interpreted by another part of the brain. What happens if we get a concussion? Why do people lose their sense of smell?

Adam Rogers 00:37:08 Oh, it’s so weird.

Adam Rogers 00:37:10 So that thing that you were just talking about, these afferent neurons, these receptors that are just attached to neural cables, basically neural wiring that goes up into our brain, into the olfactory cortex, the sensory part of our brain that does all the work of figuring, sorting out these molecules into what we think of as smells or aromas. All those dangly bits go through a bone called the crib or form plate. It’s like, did you ever have a Play-Doh thing when you were a kid that like, would you put the Play-Doh in? And you press the lever and it comes out through the front, through the dye like a dye, and it comes out of spaghetti.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:41 Yeah. I also put the Play-Doh in my nose as well, so it’s kind of the same extrusion type thing to get it out. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:37:47 And if I say Play-Doh, everybody who had it remembers what it smelled like, too. It’s a very characteristic smell. That’s true. So you have to imagine the plate is like that die that extrudes the spaghetti with the neurons dangling down.

Adam Rogers 00:37:58 And then when you have a concussion, bonks your head and your brain, that sort of concussion is right. All the brain stuff sloshes inside your skull with your right. It moves like this, but your skull doesn’t. Well, when it does that against the cruciform plate, it just shears all that off.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:14 So you’ve lost your sense of smell. The end parts that were picking up all the molecules.

Adam Rogers 00:38:18 Right? They just. They’re gone. And sometimes they grow back, you know, they come back, they they reform. The brain is more plastic than people give it credit for often. But yeah, that’s that that’s what happens. And then with with Covid, a lot of people lost their sense of smell with Covid too. And that was because those neurons, all those tissues. Covid could also infect those tissues. And so it could cause damage or cause them to be inflamed. So you wouldn’t have sense of smell for a while.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:38 Wow okay. Oh my goodness. So let me just jump through some of these things.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:42 Because ethanol is unique because it has a molecule. It’s so tiny and it can pass the blood brain barrier and it can trigger both pain and pleasure, as we know. Why do some people seem more sensitive to it than others? We’ve heard about Asian flushing, don’t have the enzyme or whatever, but what is there about ethanol? Different people react to it differently.

Adam Rogers 00:39:03 You know, ethanol is incredibly poorly understood compared to other psychoactive compounds. There’s just not a lot of research into that. So probably because nobody’s even really totally sure, like what brain receptor ethanol attaches to to cause those effects.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:19 So we know more about like oxycodone than we do ethanol. Very much so. And why is that? Why? Why don’t we know more since we love it so much? It’s a big part of our lives.

Adam Rogers 00:39:30 When you ask researchers who study it, they will say that it’s basically a puritanical lack of desire for granting agencies like the government to seem like they’re encouraging a Advice to be most sort of reductionist about it.

Adam Rogers 00:39:45 I don’t know if that’s actually true, but that does seem right. Almost all of the research on the effects of alcohol is very reasonably dedicated to understanding addiction.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:53 Right. Right.

Adam Rogers 00:39:55 You know, addiction is the part of this that has the most societal cost. So I understand it. That’s mostly what’s going on. So the closest that I think people have gotten, I will admit it’s been a long time. So one of your viewers has better research on this. I want to see it. But most of the stuff that I’ve seen, it’s probably like a benzodiazepine, like a Valium or a Klonopin, which is why you’re not supposed to take those while you’re drinking because they have synergistic effects. Same receptors. So like, you know, two drinks in a Valium, you’re you’re out, right? You’re gone. Dangerously gone.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:22 Oh. Dangerously gone.

Adam Rogers 00:40:23 Yeah. Because because they, they, they seem to affect the same receptors in the brain.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:28 Okay. Maybe maybe that’s the clock. All right.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:32 So a bit about hangovers. So we often hear that clear spirits give you fewer hangovers than dark spirits. Any truth.

Adam Rogers 00:40:41 No, I think that’s nonsense.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:42 Yeah. We thought congeners, those things that whatever the byproducts of fermentation.

Adam Rogers 00:40:48 It signs is terrible. Alas. I mean, it tends to be survey based and then we don’t really like congeners. Anything that’s not water or alcohol. But I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly been hungover after vodka. And, you know, vodka doesn’t have any congeners or at least not supposed to. That science is really it’s dicey. And it’s full of a lot of cultural memes that aren’t really scientific. Like the thing about how people will get a headache from red wine because of histamines. You’ve heard that, right?

Natalie MacLean 00:41:14 Yeah. Yeah, I’ve heard it. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:41:15 White wine has histamines, too.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:17 Yes.

Adam Rogers 00:41:18 You know, it’s inimical to the process, but people will say they don’t get a headache for my wine. So you think? Well, I believe people are getting a headache, but.

Adam Rogers 00:41:24 So maybe it’s from something else. What? But what? Nobody knows. The same kind of goes for, like. Well, which conjurer is it? Why would you? You know, this is along the same lines as people who say that, tequila makes them angry, but whiskey makes them happy or something. Like, well, you have to give me a mechanism. If you give me a hint what that mechanism might be. Because really, the only significant, as far as anybody knows, the only significant psychoactive compound in any of this stuff is alcohol is ethanol. If there’s something else in it, I want to know what it is, but nobody does.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:56 Other than your own expectations of how it’s going to make you act.

Adam Rogers 00:41:59 Very important.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:01 Yeah, very. And to the taste. Everything. There’s been all kinds of studies. Dehydration really, isn’t it? That’s another myth about hangovers.

Adam Rogers 00:42:08 I assume you’re definitely dehydrated. For sure. Alcohol suppresses a hormone called vasopressin. That’s why you pee so much when you’ve been drinking.

Adam Rogers 00:42:18 So you’re certainly dehydrated, and that doesn’t feel good. But if you rehydrate, you’re still hungover. I don’t know.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:23 Absolutely. So we don’t know about hangovers either. Oh my goodness. Okay. There’s so much more to do. Research. So your book was published in 2014. What new developments in the science of booze have surprised you most since then?

Adam Rogers 00:42:36 There have been a couple of things that I thought were pretty cool. There are some distillers who take who are taking a kind of more scientific approach to developing the recipes for what they’re making, trying that, that aren’t in the old standard categories. So there’s a team of folks who used to be in the kitchen at Noma, which was the kind of molecular gastronomy place in Europe.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:53 Copenhagen.

Adam Rogers 00:42:54 Yeah. Thank you. I couldn’t remember where it was. Some of them have started a distillery. They make a lot of weird, interesting stuff, you know, basing the like the base spirit is a peppers. And then they, they use all kinds of herbs and stuff and they taste really interesting and are category defining.

Adam Rogers 00:43:08 That’s the thing that I like about them. Like is that a whiskey? Is that a gin? Is that what is that? It’s like, well it’s something new. We don’t they don’t know. We don’t know what to call it, which is fun. There’s a company, a small distillery that I like for the idea of it at least. They’re mostly constant focusing, I think, on making fuel now, but they take basically carbon dioxide and then turn that into ethanol, like, because it’s just a right. It’s a they do the chemistry on it to make an alcohol out of out of CO2 that you like you instead of letting the CO2 go to the atmosphere and cause climate change. You know, you take a trade off, make a martini. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve tried I tried their vodka a few years ago and it was I mean, it was fine, but it was fun. The idea of it was fun. Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:51 And now you have said that with all this research and so on.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:56 Why do you say that people don’t want to have drinks with you anymore? Adam.

Adam Rogers 00:44:01 After. So we’ve been talking for a little bit more than an hour. I don’t know, you tell me if this was interesting or annoying. You can imagine it might be a bit much sitting at a bar be like. Oh, and another thing started.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:10 Yeah. Order another round.

Adam Rogers 00:44:12 That’s right. Oh, they have weird. They have weird bitters. Bring that down. Stuff’s got herbs in it.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:16 You.

Adam Rogers 00:44:16 Know.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:17 So, yeah. So you you’re all about the context and everything else. So. Yeah, I can just imagine. All right. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you wanted to bring up before we wrap up?

Adam Rogers 00:44:30 We mentioned at the top a little bit about the kind of theater of it and how much fun it is. You know that almost independent of what’s actually in your glass, that the fun around it of the environments can be part of so much part of the enjoyment, enjoyment of the experience.

Adam Rogers 00:44:41 And I, I worry a little bit sometimes when I say that, that it sounds like I’m denigrating. I’m absolutely not. That’s part of the experience. That is part of why this is so great. It’s why that bottle of wine that you have at that little bistro that you find on a back street in the whatever R&D salon in Paris tastes so incredible there. And then when you get it home, watching it in front of the latest episode of Reacher, it’s just not that great. you know, yes, it’s still great. It’s still great, but it’s a different that’s a different kind of moment. Not that I’m drinking wine in front of Reacher. It’s one of life’s great pleasures. But I also, you know, there have been experiments, great experiments where people taste totally different things in a wine based on what color it is like. The addition of food coloring to a white wine makes people taste it as though it’s a as though it’s a red wine. And and I just think what’s important about that is, is to make this into a totalizing experience.

Adam Rogers 00:45:35 To not try to tell ourselves. This is the part that I think is maybe an error. People disagree with me that the sommelier thing of like, okay, no, I’m here. I’m focused in. I look at the I’m going to do the color of it, you know, in light and I’m do the aroma, you know, you know, in a glass. And then I get a sip and I want to taste it on the front of my tongue and then the back, which is a little weird, but okay, fine. You get at least the retro nasal olfaction of it and also the taste flavors on your tongue. And then that’s it. And now I’m going to identify what that wine is and make some decisions about what the flavor notes are and whether I like it. And for somebody like me there’s there’s more there’s more of like, you know, where do we buy this bottle? And did I get it at a restaurant where they did a big show of decanting it or something, that all of those things are joyful.

Adam Rogers 00:46:19 They’re part of the fun of it also.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:21 Absolutely. I’ll drink to that. Adam, thank you so much. Where can we find you and your books?

Adam Rogers 00:46:28 Online Mine books are whatever transnational oligarch oligopoly is selling books to you at the moment are available. Amazon has them, bookshop.org has them. Bookshop.org, I guess, where you can find links to those on my website, which is Adam Rogers net. And you can also listen to me saying outrageous puns on blue Sky at Jet Chocolate. Dot net I can’t remember how blue Sky works like it, but anyway, that’s where.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:57 Yeah, well, we’ll put links to all of that in the show notes too. So if people are writing that down. So thank you so much. I mean this is just fascinating. I can’t wait to relisten to your book again. And I’ll pick up more this time. Great stories Adam. Great research, great writing. It was worth it. All that grind. It was worth it. Adam.

Adam Rogers 00:47:16 Thank you.

Adam Rogers 00:47:16 I didn’t mean to sound. I was complaining about it. I’m. I’m really glad. I’m really glad that you liked the book.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:20 That’s great. Absolutely. No, no. From one writer to another, I know I’ve been there. Well, cheers. And I hope the next one is in person at a bar sometime, maybe.

Adam Rogers 00:47:29 Lovely.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:29 Thank you.

Adam Rogers 00:47:30 Thanks for having me.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:31 All right. Thanks. Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Adam. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how does oak aging change? Wine and whisky flavor and color. Well, when you’re drinking whiskey, as Adam says, it has a beautiful amber color. And that’s all from the wood. It’s completely clear when it goes into the barrel and it’s brown when it comes out. So color is part of what changes along with all those flavors. Different spirits use different rules about how they aged them. So wine goes usually into new oak. Not always. Bourbon goes into new oak.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:12 Single malt whiskey goes into old oak. The barrels have to have been used for something else. A second fill, as they say. So they’ll use a bourbon cask or a pork cask or a sherry cask so that the whisky gets the flavour of whatever else has been in it. In the process of aging, as the temperature goes up and down, the pores of the wood open and close, and as they open, the liquid gets drawn into that layer inside the wood and then gets pushed back out again. I never knew that. So there’s this kind of back and forth process, which is why so many of the experimental attempts to accelerate aging use heat to try to cycle that faster. And it’s also why people drink more young American whiskies than European whiskies, due to the warmth and the fact that age is more quickly. Number two, what do glass gears and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation? Well, I’m glad you asked. Distillation was developed nearly 2 to 300 years ago. In the common era, people were starting to transform naturally occurring phenomena into a technology that could exist, say, in a temple or in the home.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:25 Distillation is one of those technologies, along with a lot of automatons and simple machines, gear, screws and the steam engines. They were also figuring out glass, ceramics and metals. A very exciting time. Number three why is yeast such an essential tool, both in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change? As Adam explains, yeasts are a workhorse organism in laboratories because it’s very easy to change their traits and genetics. They share DNA with each other, and when they grow, they mutate very quickly from generation to generation. So you could use classic animal or microbial husbandry techniques to change them as well. This can become especially important as climate change changes the regions that are important to wine. Places like Napa and Sonoma, are becoming too hot to grow the kind of grapes that they grow, or places like Australia get super hot and they still want to grow grapes that favor a cooler climate. So you can develop a yeast that can respond to those heat stresses and still produce more of the flavor molecules that you want from these particular strains.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:38 In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Adam, links to his website and books the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. If you missed episode 253, go back and take a listen. I chat with Jane Lopez about her emotional guide to wine and how to get a solid wine education. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Jane Lopes 00:51:06 It was the combination of all that wine offered because wine can be very academic, very intellectual. You know, I remember a lot of nights coming home from my job at the retail store and pulling out a wine book, but I really liked that that knowledge was connected to an experience, a sensory experience. I could study the wines of the northern Rhone and the soil type and the winemaking and the attributes of the grape, and then I could taste that in a glass. That to me was very exciting. And I also really loved the social aspects of it.

Jane Lopes 00:51:36 When it came down to spending my 20s in a library, or talking to people and serving great wine and pairing it with food, and the latter seemed a lot more appealing.

Natalie MacLean 00:51:47 Absolutely. I’m with you on that, because wine does get you out of your head all the time. If you’re inclined to be there and get you reconnected with your senses and your body and the emotions totally. You won’t want to miss next week. When we chat with Henry Jeffries, the author of Empire of Booze and Vines in a Cold Climate, the latter of which was shortlisted for the James Beard Awards and won the Fortnum and Mason Drink Book of the year. He joins us from his home in Kent, England. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the science of wine. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean or.

Natalie MacLean 00:52:46 Email me if you have a SIP tip question, or if you’d like to win one of eight copies of books by Adam, Fiona, Rosemary and yes, three from Henry Jeffreys. If you want to get a jump on claiming one of his books, or if you’ve read my book or listening to it, I’d also love to hear your thoughts about this episode. So email me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to take the free online food and wine pairing class with me, called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That can ruin your dinner or lunch and how to fix them forever. At Natalie MacLean. That’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. Three. Three one. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a whiskey that was aged perfection in oak. You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media.

Natalie MacLean 00:53:54 So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week.

Natalie MacLean 00:54:02 Cheers!

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How does oak aging change? Wine and whiskey flavor. Color and texture. What do glass gears and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation? And why is yeast such an essential tool in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in part two of our chat with Adam Rogers. You don’t need to have listened to part one first from last week, but if you missed it, go back and have a listen. After you finish this one, by the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover why sugar deserves the title of the most important molecule in the world. Yes, it’s beating out water, in Adam’s opinion. Speaking of water, how human saliva is used in the production of Chika, one of the oldest types of alcoholic beverages. What? microbial terroir is and how it affects the flavor profile of fermented drinks. How the process of distillation actually works. The most important thing we can learn from the alchemists, whether the shape of a distillation still is important to the process, even that little dent in the corner.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:21 What’s happening to spirits while they age in barrels? The major innovations to aging wine and whiskeys more quickly, and why some people lose their sense of smell after a concussion. Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started. Welcome to episode 331 city TV’s Breakfast Television, which airs nationally to 3.3 million viewers, recently did a complete makeover with a new set, new location and new hosts Dina Pugliese and Tim Bolen. I’ve known Deena and Tim for years, so it was like a homecoming when they asked me to be on the show shortly after their launch.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:47 I’ll share the wines, whiskeys, and tips that we discussed with you now. Spring is in the air and with it comes a sense of renewal. So what better way to toast a fresh start than with some tasty wines and spirits? And who better to lead the toast than our favorite drinks expert? Natalie MacLean, editor of Canada’s largest wine review site at Natalie MacLean. Com. Dina and Tim, it’s great to raise a glass with the two of you in your new roles on this beautiful new set. Did you know that new beginnings are just like wine and whiskey barrels? They’re full of promise, occasionally under pressure, but always improving with time. And the good news is that unlike the barrels, the two of you won’t need to be stored in a cool, dark place to reach your full potential. So I’ve grouped these wines and whiskies in twos in honor of you as the dynamic new duo, so feel free to smell or taste these first two wines from the Niagara Winery. Bighead. Now, I immediately thought of you when I selected Big Head wines not for ego, but for your imagination and the big creative ideas that you’re bringing to this show.

Natalie MacLean 00:03:55 In fact, the versatile Chardonnay reminds me of Dina, from producer to entertainment reporter. And now back to hosting. And like Dina. This wine is zesty with its aromas of crunchy golden apple and warm buttered toast. And I’m not saying that Dina smells like warm buttered toast, though if she did, it would definitely be artisanal sourdough. On the palate, this Chardonnay is rich and complex, with a beautiful mineral backbone that gives it elegance and longevity. I pair it with a Spring Awakening risotto made with tender asparagus, fresh peas and delicate lemon zest that brings out the wine’s crisp acidity, all finished with shavings of aged parmesan that echoes the wine’s complexity. The robust Cabernet Sauvignon select reminds me of your career trajectory, Tim. It starts bold, if a little rough around the edges, then continues to develop with complexity and depth as it opens up. Just like your journey from sports reporting. To anchoring this show with Dina. The Cabernet is bursting with notes of black currant, cedar and a hint of dark chocolate.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:06 There’s a wonderful structure to this wine, with firm tannins that will help age it beautifully. I pair this with New Horizons beef tenderloin crusted with cracked black pepper and fresh herbs. Seared to perfection with caramelized exterior and a tender, juicy center served alongside roasted root vegetables that bring out the earthy notes in the wine. Did you know that Niagara on the Lake has a unique microclimate created by Lake Ontario that helps protect the vines from the extreme temperature fluctuations? This allows winemakers to produce these exceptional, cool climate wines with both power and elegance. Next up we have these Tread Softly wines from Australia that are brand new to the market here this month. Not only are they certified sustainable and bottled in lightweight glass, but they also plant a tree for every case sold. So far, they’ve planted 2.5 million trees, the equivalent of taking 35,000 cars off the road. Wow. We’re going green here. Tim, in order of your Irish heritage, the Pinot Grigio is crisp and refreshing with notes of green apple and lime zest.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:21 It’s lighter in alcohol than many Australian wines, but still full of character. I pair this with gentle beginnings seafood ceviche, where delicate pieces of fresh scallops and snapper are lightly cooked in lime juice, tossed with crisp cucumber, ripe avocado and a fragrant cilantro that together matched the wine’s bright, clean profile. Their silky smooth Pinot noir is all about ripe cherries and subtle spice. It has a lingering finish that stays with you long after the last drop. Much like Dina’s smile after the show is over. Oh, a fascinating fact about Pinot noir. It’s one of the oldest grape varieties in the world, dating back more than 2000 years. It’s also one of the most genetically unstable grapes, which is why you find it in so many different clones and expressions around the world. I’d pair this with a duck breast seared until the skin is crackling crisp, then sliced thin to reveal a perfectly pink interior served with a cherry reduction sauce that mirrors the wine’s fruit notes and wild mushroom risotto that compliments its earthy undertones. Next up, I have the superb Reserva 120 wines from Santa Rita in Chile.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:39 The Sauvignon blanc is bursting with lemon zest, bold and confident like DNA. As someone who thrives on a fast paced morning show. The 120 commemorates the 120 resistance fighters who battled the invading Spanish army to secure Chile’s national independence in 1823. The winery hid them in their cellars and saved their lives. So these wines aren’t just a taste of Chile, they’re also a sip of history. This vibrant and refreshing Sauvignon blanc with tropical fruit notes and a clean, crisp finish would go well with an Italian inspired welcome back linguine Al Vongole, where tender clams are gently steamed open in a fragrant broth of white wine, garlic and fresh parsley, then tossed with al dente pasta that’s been finished in a briny, aromatic cooking liquid. Oh my lord. Getting hungry and thirsty. The bright acidity of this wine cuts through the richness of the dish, while complementing the delicate flavors of the seafood. Much like how Dina’s vibrant personality has been lighting up TV screens since 2006. The Santa Rita Cabernet Sauvignon 120 Reserva offers aromas of blackcurrant and cedar.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:55 It’s modern with a classic twist. Much like your bow ties and sartorial sensibility. Tim I pair this with a homecoming celebration osso buco, where veal shanks are slowly braised in a rich tomato sauce with vegetables and herbs until the meat is fall off the bone. Tender and served with saffron risotto that soaks up all those amazing flavors. A nod to your Woodbridge roots and Italian background. Dina. Now we’re shifting to spirits. In 1972, the 40 Creek Distillery opened and more recently was named Whiskey Maker of the decade at the Canadian Whiskey Awards. Tim, you attended Brock University in the heart of Niagara wine country. Well, 40 Creek Copper Bowl has intense toffee aromas like bourbon but with some spicy rye notes. The whiskey gets educated through extended barrel aging, creating incredible complexity, much like your morning commentary. Tim. Did you know that Canadian whiskey must be aged for at least three years in wooden barrels? 40 Creek takes this much further with their special aging process, creating their distinctive, smooth yet complex profile. I’d pair this with a fresh perspective Maple glazed bacon, where thick cut artisanal bacon is slowly baked with pure Canadian maple syrup until it achieves that perfect balance of sweet, salty, smoky, and crisp an irresistible accompaniment to this premium whiskey.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:28 We also have the 40 Creek Honey Spiced Whiskey. It’s spiced but subtly sweet, so it hits the middle ground between bourbon and rye. Serve it with lemonade for a refreshing drink as we head into warmer weather. And for our grand finale, we have the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey. Originally developed in Canada in the mid 1980s and has become one of the country’s most popular whiskey brands, it’s still made in their old Montreal distillery, a blend of Canadian whiskey with natural cinnamon flavor to give it that fiery kick. Much like your punny humor, Deena, not to mention your curling iron karaoke, you and it bring warmth and fun to any occasion. The brand new Fireball Apple Cinnamon ready to drink format brings together ripe, juicy, sparkling apple juice with the cinnamon spice of fireball. It’s the perfect combo for pure refreshment. Here we come, summer. I’d pair this with Brave New World Dark Chocolate fondue, where the richness of the melted, bittersweet chocolate is enhanced with a hint of cayenne pepper to mere the whiskey’s spiciness, served with fresh strawberries, banana slices and a buttery pound cake cubes for dipping into the velvety, decadent mixture.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:45 So, my final words of wisdom. I’d like to offer a toast. Here’s to embracing change with open arms and open hearts with full glasses for brand new starts. All right, so I’m always looking for your suggestions for upcoming segments on Citi TV’s breakfast television, CTV Morning Live, The Social Global’s morning show, and Morning Live about drinks for spring, Easter, Earth Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day barbecue and Canada Day. So if you have wine, spirits, beer, cocktails or mixed drinks to suggest whether they’re alcoholic or not, please let me know. Meanwhile, I’m reviewing my favorite drinks over on Instagram at Natalie MacLean wine. Connect with me there. Back to today’s guest. One of you will win a copy of Adam’s terrific second book, Full Spectrum How the Signs of Color Made Us Modern. And I’m pleased to announce two winners of the book on Tuscany, From Brunello to Bulgari. Tales from the Heart of Italy. They are Don Bogart from Tillsonburg, Ontario, and Lucia from Vancouver. I also still have two copies of Fiona morrison’s Ten Great Wine Families, a tour through Europe, and two of Rosemary George’s book The Wines of Languedoc.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:03 These are gorgeous books with full color photos and maps. You can live anywhere in the world to win these, by the way. All you have to do is email me and let me know you’d like to win. I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir wine, which on fire rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. I’d be happy to send you a beautifully designed, personally signed book. Plates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean 331. The paperback usually arrives within a day or two of ordering. The book and audiobook are instantly available. Magic. Okay, on with the show. You’ve noted that different yeast strains are designed to create different flavors.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:11 Some yeasts now will lower alcohol. I’ve heard of power yeasts that will produce turbo alcohol high alcohol, although that’s going out of fashion, especially in wine. Are there other things that new yeasts are being bred to do?

Adam Rogers 00:14:24 Yeah, it’s a tough row to hoe. Wrong substrate, I know, but because of concerns about GMOs.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:30 Right. And those are banned in the EU. Right.

Adam Rogers 00:14:33 So if you’re trying to make wine there, they’ll get mad at you if you have a genetically modified yeast. But the reason that yeast are also a workhorse organism in laboratories is that they’re very easy to change traits, to change their genetics. They share DNA with each other. When they grow, they tend to mutate very quickly. Generation to generation will change. So you can use kind of classic animal or microbial husbandry techniques to change them as well, to look for particular traits. This is, I think, going to become especially important as climate change changes the regions that are important wine producers, as places like Napa and Sonoma become too hot to grow the kind of grapes that they grow, or as places like Australia get super hot and they still want to grow grapes and varietals that really kind of favor a cooler climate generally, or scenic to that, that maybe you can develop yeasts that can respond to those stresses and still produce more of the flavor, chemical, the flavor molecules that you want out of those particular strains, you have to identify what those molecules are.

Adam Rogers 00:15:33 That’s a hard part. That would be one approach. I mean, it’s sort of like it’s that or or Napa cedes all of its importance to Washington State. Those are your choices.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:43 So yeah. Yeah. No, that would be great if they could come up with something like that. And still, to protect the signature of Napa or wherever you’re talking about moving on to sugar, you describe sugar as the most important molecule on Earth. That’s a bold, bold claim. Adam, can you explain why sugar deserves this title over other contenders like, say, water?

Adam Rogers 00:16:03 Yeah, sure. I’m obviously being provocative in that statement, but to me, waters, medium waters, the thing where all this chemistry happens, but the other stuff, the other chemicals are message and sugar, especially because it has so many different functions. Sugar is another storage of another way to store energy. It’s a complicated molecule. The molecular bonds keep a lot of energy tied up in there, so you can eat it, and it gives you a lot of calories of vim and vigor for any animal, not just us, but also because it can be structural.

Adam Rogers 00:16:29 You can assemble sugar molecules like Lego pieces to build all kinds of other stuff. One of those things is starch. Starch is a big, complicated polysaccharide. Poly is many saccharine to sugar, but if you do a few little tweaks of those molecules, if you assemble sugar molecules in a slightly different way, you get cellulose, which is wood or stuff that makes up plants. It’s the most, I think, the most common molecule on Earth. Maybe this record looks change, and if you assemble it again slightly differently, you add a nitrogen in there. You get something called chitin, which is the stuff that crab shells, crab and lobster shells. And it’s also the cell wall in yeast. Yeast have chitin, which is kind of weird that they have that. Another super common on Earth, super common molecule for life. So these are all sort of sugar and sugar derived, even DNA, even genetic material is a sugar backbone. That’s the structural part of our genetic material is a sugar.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:19 Is that the ribose?

Adam Rogers 00:17:20 Yeah, exactly.

Adam Rogers 00:17:21 That’s right. The ribose and deoxyribonucleic acid. That’s right.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:24 There you go. Okay. Yeah. All right. So we’ve covered sugar well enough. Now let’s go on to be here for three hours. Fermentation. Let’s get to some of the action here. Some of the oldest alcoholic beverages in history like chicha. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Relied on human saliva to start fermentation. That just caught my eye. Like, how did that work? It’s weird. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:17:48 So you and I and a lot of other animals can digest starch. We have an enzyme in our saliva called amylase. ASC is the enzyme part. The animal is the starch part. In this case, that breaks down starch into the sugars that we can digest. Yeast cannot do this. They can’t digest starch. And huge amounts of the sugar in plants is locked up as starch. So if you want to take the sugar in a plant, especially in a grain like a corn or a barley and ferment it, you have to simplify the sugars.

Adam Rogers 00:18:19 You got to break them apart. And there are a bunch of different ways to do that. The malting process is a way to do that. Asian spirits use Koji is another fungus that can digest the starch. Turn it into sugar before the yeast get to it. Chicha, which is a South American corn based fermented product. The way they would make it is that basically women, because a lot of this production stuff was seen as women’s work until it was industrialized, just like the rest of human industrial history would sort of sit and chew the corn in there, like masticate it in their mouth. So the amylase in their starch would break down in their saliva, would break down the starch into sugars, and then they would kind of spit it out and make a little patty of this blue corn and let it dry in the sun. So get rid of the cooties, right? Basically. And then they would use that and ferment that into the drink. I’ve actually never had it. And I really want to try it because it sounds weird as hell.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:12 It does. You need to have one of those village visits or whatever. Another story for your next book. And we often think of fermentation as yeast turning sugar and alcohol. But you write about the microbial terroir, which we may have already touched on. What do you mean by the microbial terroir?

Adam Rogers 00:19:29 Two things. Yeast make a lot of other chemicals in that digestive process. That transformation of sugar doesn’t only create alcohol, it creates other alcohols other than ethanol, which is the one that we think of most often. And also other chemicals that have flavors and aromas. So what we were talking about, that yeasty flavor that a pet will have or that a sour beer will have, those are those other molecules making their presence known. You know, you can get a yeast strain that has very few of those. So you have something that doesn’t show that. Or you can get a wild type yeast that’s really crazy and, you know, go nuts. But also there are other kinds of microbes in the environment that you can also allow into your fermentation.

Adam Rogers 00:20:11 This is especially true in rums, especially true in rum agricole, rum agricole ferments and then distillers clear sugar cane juice. Most of the rum, the sort of Bacardi type rum that you, you know, you get at the target or whatever is usually using molasses as the substrate. So when you’re making sugar, you’re making you get the white sugar that comes out that you put in your coffee or whatever. And then molasses is a byproduct of it. What do you do with that? Well, you can ferment it and distill it, make rum. You can also just take that cane juice and do that. But when you do, you have to go really fast because it’s pure microbe food. And so not just the yeast that you want will settle on it, but other yeasts and other stuff from the environment will settle on it too. And in fact, some of them will make flavors so crazy that there are some rum makers who will actually scrape the gunk out of the still, bury it for a while, let it grow.

Adam Rogers 00:21:01 Like all kinds of weird stuff, like the blooms that, you know, if you if something goes bad in your refrigerator and you’re like, oh, I’ve got a little colony or whatever, I better throw it away. They want those to happen, and then they’ll actually mix some of that back into the product. There’s nothing toxic in it, and all the weird stuff gets killed, but you get the flavors.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:17 Okay. What flavors would that blue gunk make? Would it be just sort of subtle? Feral. Underlying.

Adam Rogers 00:21:24 Is a good word there? Yeah. Have you ever had a rum that you describe as, like, funky and grass like.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:30 No, but I like that word. I can use it now.

Adam Rogers 00:21:32 It’s those. Are you tasting? You’re like, wow, that’s really, that’s got like a they can be almost meaty, like they’re very umami flavors. They juxtapose really interestingly with the sweetness of a rum. There are a few rum makers, especially so not the Jamaican rum makers as much, but like the Barbadian rum makers, some of the other islands, the other Caribbean rums where you’re tasting, you’re like, whoa, that is weird.

Adam Rogers 00:21:53 Like that is not a daiquiri rum. That’s something else. You know? That’s like, you want to make a teapot out of that or something real like aggressive. What a story. A teapot. It’s a rum. About a half dollar sized slice. Cutouts of the outside of a lime muddled into some syrup, and then just a dollop of rum. It’s one of my favorite rum drinks. It’s. They’re great.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:13 So that sounds great. Very funky too. So again, the process really clarified things for me, the organization of your book, because I focus mostly on wine and not a lot on spirits, though I’m really keen to learn. So distillation. The way you positioned it to me seems like it moves, you know, a step beyond fermentation. So distilled wine gives us brandy, distilled beer gives us whiskey. And you describe distillation poetically as the apotheosis of human life on earth. Now, what do we mean by that?

Adam Rogers 00:22:45 Perhaps again, I’m being somewhat provocative when I say that.

Adam Rogers 00:22:47 Here’s why I think that it’s one of the first, really among the first. And it comes at a moment of intense technological development for humanity. So depending on how you believe these histories, distillation gets developed sometimes sort of in the first 2 to 300 years of the common era. And it comes out of a moment when people are just becoming the engineers that we are when they’re really starting to It transform naturally occurring phenomena into a technology that can exist in a temple or in the home. And distillation is one of those technologies, along with a lot of automatons and sort of all of the like the simple machines, the gears and the screws and the steam engines. The earliest moments of saying, hey, if I dig up enough of those really interesting dirt and cook it long enough to turn it into this really hard stuff and combine it with, like, if I melt sand, it turns into this clear thing that’s really hard. It’ll break, but it’s also, you know, clear and beautiful. They’re figuring out glass.

Adam Rogers 00:23:50 They’re figuring out ceramics, they’re figuring out metal. They’re figuring out gears. They’re figuring out all of the things that are the underpinnings of the built environment today. And distillation is one of those distillations happens in those same labs, basically. And those same people are figuring that out, too.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:05 I love that just a hive of human achievement and curiosity. As you noted, fermentation would happen without us. But distillation requires human intervention. You call distillation of technology, but not chemistry. What’s the difference to you?

Adam Rogers 00:24:20 Well, chemistry is something that also probably happens. You discover biochemistry. Those are processes that human scientists can unpack and then take advantage of. But in order for a distillation to happen, distillation is a fundamentally a separation technology. It’s like a strainer or a centrifuge, you know, using gravity, spin things around. The heavy stuff goes to the bottom, right. The heavy stuff goes through the operation. Evaporation is one. Right. So still is basically using evaporation using vapor pressure. What that means is you heat stuff at different temperatures, different liquids turn into steam turned into a vapor.

Adam Rogers 00:24:56 And what it still does is heat this mass of fermented liquid and the lighter molecules turn into vapor. First go up the still and then go over the top so the heavy stuff stays behind. The lighter stuff goes over. The lighter stuff tends to be the alcohols, and the first run of that is like methanol, and things will make you go blind and kill you. And so you don’t want to use that. Don’t throw that away or use that for cleaning. And then you keep the middle part, the center cut that comes out. So in order to make that happen, you have to know how to manipulate metal. You have to know how to manipulate fire. You have to know how to manipulate cold because you have to chill that vapor coming out over the top. You have to understand a whole lot of basic physics and chemistry, and then metallurgy and design to build this thing that becomes what we know is, is still.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:42 Right? Right. Oh, fascinating. The early distillers, the alchemists, were trying to separate the spirit or soul from an object from its physical body.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:52 So some were trying to get gold from lead. And what was the most important thing you think the alchemists taught us?

Adam Rogers 00:25:58 I love the alchemist. I think they get a bad rap. We think of alchemists as being, you know, flimflam guys basically as being grifters, because you can’t make gold and can’t make lead into gold. But the practices that they developed, the methods, the methodologies still became critical for chemistry and became critical for physics, even if what they were doing was nonsense, you know, largely. Well, two things. One, I think it’s important that the at least this story of how distillation was created. It was created in a lab of a woman scientist in the sort of 200 common era or so woman named Maria. The U.S. is how she’s accounted for and like, because the history here is so old and not reliable. Did she really exist? Did she really do it? But maybe. But it’s one of the stories that we tell here. That distillation was invented by this woman in her lab that she had in Alexandria.

Adam Rogers 00:26:48 I also think, and this one’s just me. I’ve known a lot of, like, post-docs and graduate students and in the sciences, and they’re always fermenting and distilling stuff. And I just assume that, like, Maria was trying to distill the spirits of the fundamental gold that existed in the philosopher’s Stone or whatever, and then her students were like, buddy, what if we put beer in there?

Adam Rogers 00:27:10 What are you grad students you think will happen right.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:13 Around the world and through time trying to make alcohol?

Adam Rogers 00:27:16 That’s my assumption. That’s my working assumption.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:18 Yes, that’s a good assumption. Absolutely. And her name goes on in one of the Olympic stills, the Bon Marie.

Adam Rogers 00:27:25 Bon Maria, the double boiler. Right. I mean, you might have one in your kitchen, I wonder, in my kitchen. And it’s also a lab. It’s still in labs today. It’s still called a Bon Marie. And it’s named after her. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:33 Maria’s bath or his bath? Ice baths. So I know that distillers, they all have their secret recipes and whatever, but I think it was in you mentioned somewhere where when they tried to replicate a still because they last 30 or 40 years before they sort of give out and have to be replaced.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:50 They replicate like small dents because they believe that. Is there any scientific evidence, really, that a small dent, putting it back in there is going to affect the taste of the spirit?

Adam Rogers 00:28:01 No, it’s one of those things that has both intuitive power. You can understand how it might be true. Like. Yeah. Okay, I buy that because inside this still. As this heating process is happening, especially in the batch kind of stills that like single malt uses and craft distillers will use where there’s sort of an onion shape. It’s got that like ball like this. And then the top, the tall stock. Right. So inside this part stuff is all heating. And like the vapors go up and then they condense on the inside of that and drip back down. And so the different shapes allow different flavors to make their way out. You can have a tall skinny one of those. Or when you get a lot of oily flavors and little fat one because stuff stays in the bottom for longer. So.

Adam Rogers 00:28:37 Sure. Has anybody ever tested it? Well, no, but commercially they test it. So there are stories about, for example, as a business, the single malt whisky business in Scotland has its ups and downs. And in the last decade or decade and a half, there was an attempt at a lot of rapid expansion to try to deal with the market in China. And they kind of messed a lot of stuff up and doing it. But one of the things that there’s a famous story of a distillery that tried to expand by basically replicating the stills the same exact same shape, because there’s only 1 or 2 real steelmakers at that level, and they keep all the records, you know. So they just built two more of the stills just down the road, but they got something wrong because the stuff that came out of those stills didn’t taste like the stuff that was in their original ones, and they didn’t know what they had to, like, change what they made, change the labeling because it just didn’t taste the same.

Adam Rogers 00:29:26 There was something different about the location, about the stills, about how they heated them, about who touched the grain. For nobody knows. But these little differences manifest in the flavor that you get at the other end.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:38 Well that’s cool. And then you’ve noticed some really weird things have been distilled just to finish off this. Why are they distilling things like foie gras, mushrooms, and wet donuts?

Adam Rogers 00:29:48 Well, okay, so there’s two groups here that you do the donuts because it’s just a source of sugar that I’ve tasted that you’re just proving that any source of sugar can be run still. Because what we think of in the, in the US as moonshine is that like good old country boys up in the holler with their, like, backwoods still making stuff. That has evolved into a corn based whiskey called bourbon in the United States. But really, those guys were probably just distilling from white sugar, just whatever sugar source they could get any kind of fruit, anything, just to have enough sugar that they could get enough yield off of it.

Adam Rogers 00:30:17 Somebody was having fun, but they did it with donuts because they’re so sugary to prove that you could do it. Tasted terrible.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:23 Tasted terrible. There’s definitely a hole in the middle, I’m sure, for the mid palate anyway.

Adam Rogers 00:30:27 That’s right. You got a good nose, delicious finish, but something missing. I’m friendly with a distiller named Lance winters. He’s got a small, medium sized distillery here in the Bay Area in California called Saint George Spirits. And he was doing it as an experimental process to try to understand distilling and get at kind of what’s powerful about distilling, both as a metaphor and also as a technology, is that it really gets at the fundamental essence of something. My experience of this is usually like, if you have the best apricot, eau de vie will taste like the best apricot you’ve ever had, like the specs for an apricot. You know, like the apricot that you had when you were 12. On a perfect summer day that you picked off a tree that was perfectly ripe and that you were having the best day of your life with your family, and you had that apricot and you’re like, that’s what a great apricot tastes like.

Adam Rogers 00:31:12 Because distillation will get rid of all the extraneous stuff and just get to the center of something, which is also the metaphor for distilling. Right? So Lance was trying to do that with other flavors to see if he could capture something fundamental about a foie gras, or about seaweed, or about a mushroom. And I tasted the seaweed. One was really kind of a wild experience because it was like being on the ocean.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:37 Was it.

Adam Rogers 00:31:38 Tasting? It was like getting hit with a wave, you know, like standing there and being hit with a wave. It really did that. And he knew it too. He was a he was hilarious. He was like, yeah, I know I got that one right. Like he knew it. So it was possible.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:52 Wow. It could commercialize that.

Adam Rogers 00:31:53 I think it was idiosyncratically. I got to tell you.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:58 Oh, I see the consistency would be an issue. Yeah. All right. On to aging. What’s happening? While the spirits are changing dramatically while they’re aging, what are the key chemical reactions that are happening with that barrel?

Adam Rogers 00:32:12 Yeah, this is really interesting.

Adam Rogers 00:32:14 And it’s something that’s hard to get to the center of because the people who are the best at it keep it a secret. This is like IP because it’s so critical to what huge companies do with their business. But one of the things I love to do in a distillery, if I get the opportunity, is to taste the white dog, taste what comes out of the still, the first thing that comes out of the still.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:35 Oh, the head before you get to the middle.

Adam Rogers 00:32:38 No no no no no. Taste what they’re going to put into a barrel but just before it goes into the barrel.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:42 Okay. Gotcha.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:43 Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:32:43 Because the head will kill you, but.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:45 Right, right.

Adam Rogers 00:32:47 I would still be. I’m sure it tastes interesting.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:49 Methanol is a little bit sweeter. Research?

Natalie MacLean 00:32:51 Yeah, they call it a white dog. Okay.

Adam Rogers 00:32:53 In the US, it’s called white Dog. Yeah, because it is everything that the spirit is going to be except the aging. First of all, it also tastes good super high alcohol when it comes out of the still, but you can still taste it and it can taste like some acid, like popcorn, or like, you know, cereal, breakfast cereal flavors, really interesting flavors that sometimes get covered by the wood.

Adam Rogers 00:33:14 You know, wine has this I was going to say, has this problem too. Some people like it too. But that thing of like the classic the over oaked, buttery Chardonnay.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:20 Yeah, ketchup of the wine world. Like oak.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:23 Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:33:23 It’s the classic example of like, okay, well, I’m only tasting the wood. I’m only tasting the coconut lactose. Is that come out of that inside surface of that new French oak, because French oak is a really oily, coconutty, buttery, like all these unctuous flavors come off the inside.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:39 American Oak was the coconutty one. But is it French oak, too?

Adam Rogers 00:33:43 I always get this backwards.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:45 Well, in wine it could be different in spirits. French oak is like vanilla spice and sort of closer grained, whereas American oak for wine is is usually sweeter coconutty. And then again, different woods could be imparting different things.

Adam Rogers 00:33:59 And you’re going to be more right about this than I am for sure. Well, I’ll tell you the part of this that I was dopey about when you’re drinking whiskey and it’s that beautiful brown color that’s all from the wood.

Adam Rogers 00:34:08 It is completely clear when it goes into a barrel and it’s brown when it comes out. So color is part of what changes. And also all those flavors and different spirits have different rules about how they age. So wine goes into new oak, bourbon goes into new oak, single malt whiskey goes into old oak. It has to have been used for something else. Second fill. So they’ll use a bourbon cask or a port cask or a sherry cask. So that’ll get the flavor of whatever else has been in it. Because the process of aging, as the temperature goes up and down, the pores in the wood open and close. So they’ll open, the liquid gets drawn into that layer, the inside layer of the wood and then gets pushed back out. So there’s this kind of back and forth process, which is why so many of the experimental attempts to accelerate that process use heat to try to cycle it faster. And it’s part of why people buy tradition more than anything else. Will have younger American whiskies than European whiskies, or certainly very young whiskies that’ll come out of the tropics, let’s say Indian whiskeys or Australian whiskeys where they’re just doing like three years of super fast cycling in and out of the wood.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:15 Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:16 Wow. Have there been I mean, it’s kind of the perhaps secret people would love to get or master, but maybe haven’t. But has there been any successful experiments done to age wine and spirits even more quickly?

Natalie MacLean 00:35:31 I mean, it depends on what you think of as success.

Adam Rogers 00:35:34 Yeah, still tastes good.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:37 Doesn’t taste confected.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:38 People do it. And there are some brands.

Adam Rogers 00:35:40 There’s a company called Lost Spirits that has some technological, a bunch of different sort of technological approaches to doing it faster. This becomes a matter of personal preference. I usually don’t think it works. So, like the classic move is for a small distillery to do a faster turnaround by using a smaller barrel. So smaller barrel means there’s more exposure. But to my palate, the problem with that is that you get all of the extractive flavors from the wood, but none of the oxidation. So the other thing that happens over time is that oxidizes inside the barrel, so you don’t get any of the oxidative flavors. You do get all the extractives.

Adam Rogers 00:36:13 It tastes like green wood to me. To me that doesn’t work as well. But there’s a business case to do it because they want to get product out the door. I think that’s less common now than it was when I was writing the book.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:22 Sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:23 Well, they also throw wood chips into some cheaper wines just for that extraction. Even faster. Cheaper. So.

Adam Rogers 00:36:30 Right. Teabags, a little sawdust, right?

Natalie MacLean 00:36:32 Oh, really? Tea bags with sawdust. Oh, that’s really gross thought. But I guess they’re competing in a certain price category and. Yeah. All right, well, let’s just motor through some of this because the time is flying. But this is so fascinating. Smell and taste are most direct scents. As you say, when we smell wine, spirits, parts of our brain, dangling neurons, or touching the aroma molecules. It’s the only part of our brain that is in direct contact with the sensory world. Doesn’t get interpreted by another part of the brain. What happens if we get a concussion? Why do people lose their sense of smell?

Adam Rogers 00:37:08 Oh, it’s so weird.

Adam Rogers 00:37:10 So that thing that you were just talking about, these afferent neurons, these receptors that are just attached to neural cables, basically neural wiring that goes up into our brain, into the olfactory cortex, the sensory part of our brain that does all the work of figuring, sorting out these molecules into what we think of as smells or aromas. All those dangly bits go through a bone called the crib or form plate. It’s like, did you ever have a Play-Doh thing when you were a kid that like, would you put the Play-Doh in? And you press the lever and it comes out through the front, through the dye like a dye, and it comes out of spaghetti.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:41 Yeah. I also put the Play-Doh in my nose as well, so it’s kind of the same extrusion type thing to get it out. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:37:47 And if I say Play-Doh, everybody who had it remembers what it smelled like, too. It’s a very characteristic smell. That’s true. So you have to imagine the plate is like that die that extrudes the spaghetti with the neurons dangling down.

Adam Rogers 00:37:58 And then when you have a concussion, bonks your head and your brain, that sort of concussion is right. All the brain stuff sloshes inside your skull with your right. It moves like this, but your skull doesn’t. Well, when it does that against the cruciform plate, it just shears all that off.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:14 So you’ve lost your sense of smell. The end parts that were picking up all the molecules.

Adam Rogers 00:38:18 Right? They just. They’re gone. And sometimes they grow back, you know, they come back, they they reform. The brain is more plastic than people give it credit for often. But yeah, that’s that that’s what happens. And then with with Covid, a lot of people lost their sense of smell with Covid too. And that was because those neurons, all those tissues. Covid could also infect those tissues. And so it could cause damage or cause them to be inflamed. So you wouldn’t have sense of smell for a while.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:38 Wow okay. Oh my goodness. So let me just jump through some of these things.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:42 Because ethanol is unique because it has a molecule. It’s so tiny and it can pass the blood brain barrier and it can trigger both pain and pleasure, as we know. Why do some people seem more sensitive to it than others? We’ve heard about Asian flushing, don’t have the enzyme or whatever, but what is there about ethanol? Different people react to it differently.

Adam Rogers 00:39:03 You know, ethanol is incredibly poorly understood compared to other psychoactive compounds. There’s just not a lot of research into that. So probably because nobody’s even really totally sure, like what brain receptor ethanol attaches to to cause those effects.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:19 So we know more about like oxycodone than we do ethanol. Very much so. And why is that? Why? Why don’t we know more since we love it so much? It’s a big part of our lives.

Adam Rogers 00:39:30 When you ask researchers who study it, they will say that it’s basically a puritanical lack of desire for granting agencies like the government to seem like they’re encouraging a Advice to be most sort of reductionist about it.

Adam Rogers 00:39:45 I don’t know if that’s actually true, but that does seem right. Almost all of the research on the effects of alcohol is very reasonably dedicated to understanding addiction.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:53 Right. Right.

Adam Rogers 00:39:55 You know, addiction is the part of this that has the most societal cost. So I understand it. That’s mostly what’s going on. So the closest that I think people have gotten, I will admit it’s been a long time. So one of your viewers has better research on this. I want to see it. But most of the stuff that I’ve seen, it’s probably like a benzodiazepine, like a Valium or a Klonopin, which is why you’re not supposed to take those while you’re drinking because they have synergistic effects. Same receptors. So like, you know, two drinks in a Valium, you’re you’re out, right? You’re gone. Dangerously gone.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:22 Oh. Dangerously gone.

Adam Rogers 00:40:23 Yeah. Because because they, they, they seem to affect the same receptors in the brain.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:28 Okay. Maybe maybe that’s the clock. All right.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:32 So a bit about hangovers. So we often hear that clear spirits give you fewer hangovers than dark spirits. Any truth.

Adam Rogers 00:40:41 No, I think that’s nonsense.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:42 Yeah. We thought congeners, those things that whatever the byproducts of fermentation.

Adam Rogers 00:40:48 It signs is terrible. Alas. I mean, it tends to be survey based and then we don’t really like congeners. Anything that’s not water or alcohol. But I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly been hungover after vodka. And, you know, vodka doesn’t have any congeners or at least not supposed to. That science is really it’s dicey. And it’s full of a lot of cultural memes that aren’t really scientific. Like the thing about how people will get a headache from red wine because of histamines. You’ve heard that, right?

Natalie MacLean 00:41:14 Yeah. Yeah, I’ve heard it. Yeah.

Adam Rogers 00:41:15 White wine has histamines, too.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:17 Yes.

Adam Rogers 00:41:18 You know, it’s inimical to the process, but people will say they don’t get a headache for my wine. So you think? Well, I believe people are getting a headache, but.

Adam Rogers 00:41:24 So maybe it’s from something else. What? But what? Nobody knows. The same kind of goes for, like. Well, which conjurer is it? Why would you? You know, this is along the same lines as people who say that, tequila makes them angry, but whiskey makes them happy or something. Like, well, you have to give me a mechanism. If you give me a hint what that mechanism might be. Because really, the only significant, as far as anybody knows, the only significant psychoactive compound in any of this stuff is alcohol is ethanol. If there’s something else in it, I want to know what it is, but nobody does.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:56 Other than your own expectations of how it’s going to make you act.

Adam Rogers 00:41:59 Very important.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:01 Yeah, very. And to the taste. Everything. There’s been all kinds of studies. Dehydration really, isn’t it? That’s another myth about hangovers.

Adam Rogers 00:42:08 I assume you’re definitely dehydrated. For sure. Alcohol suppresses a hormone called vasopressin. That’s why you pee so much when you’ve been drinking.

Adam Rogers 00:42:18 So you’re certainly dehydrated, and that doesn’t feel good. But if you rehydrate, you’re still hungover. I don’t know.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:23 Absolutely. So we don’t know about hangovers either. Oh my goodness. Okay. There’s so much more to do. Research. So your book was published in 2014. What new developments in the science of booze have surprised you most since then?

Adam Rogers 00:42:36 There have been a couple of things that I thought were pretty cool. There are some distillers who take who are taking a kind of more scientific approach to developing the recipes for what they’re making, trying that, that aren’t in the old standard categories. So there’s a team of folks who used to be in the kitchen at Noma, which was the kind of molecular gastronomy place in Europe.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:53 Copenhagen.

Adam Rogers 00:42:54 Yeah. Thank you. I couldn’t remember where it was. Some of them have started a distillery. They make a lot of weird, interesting stuff, you know, basing the like the base spirit is a peppers. And then they, they use all kinds of herbs and stuff and they taste really interesting and are category defining.

Adam Rogers 00:43:08 That’s the thing that I like about them. Like is that a whiskey? Is that a gin? Is that what is that? It’s like, well it’s something new. We don’t they don’t know. We don’t know what to call it, which is fun. There’s a company, a small distillery that I like for the idea of it at least. They’re mostly constant focusing, I think, on making fuel now, but they take basically carbon dioxide and then turn that into ethanol, like, because it’s just a right. It’s a they do the chemistry on it to make an alcohol out of out of CO2 that you like you instead of letting the CO2 go to the atmosphere and cause climate change. You know, you take a trade off, make a martini. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve tried I tried their vodka a few years ago and it was I mean, it was fine, but it was fun. The idea of it was fun. Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:51 And now you have said that with all this research and so on.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:56 Why do you say that people don’t want to have drinks with you anymore? Adam.

Adam Rogers 00:44:01 After. So we’ve been talking for a little bit more than an hour. I don’t know, you tell me if this was interesting or annoying. You can imagine it might be a bit much sitting at a bar be like. Oh, and another thing started.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:10 Yeah. Order another round.

Adam Rogers 00:44:12 That’s right. Oh, they have weird. They have weird bitters. Bring that down. Stuff’s got herbs in it.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:16 You.

Adam Rogers 00:44:16 Know.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:17 So, yeah. So you you’re all about the context and everything else. So. Yeah, I can just imagine. All right. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you wanted to bring up before we wrap up?

Adam Rogers 00:44:30 We mentioned at the top a little bit about the kind of theater of it and how much fun it is. You know that almost independent of what’s actually in your glass, that the fun around it of the environments can be part of so much part of the enjoyment, enjoyment of the experience.

Adam Rogers 00:44:41 And I, I worry a little bit sometimes when I say that, that it sounds like I’m denigrating. I’m absolutely not. That’s part of the experience. That is part of why this is so great. It’s why that bottle of wine that you have at that little bistro that you find on a back street in the whatever R&D salon in Paris tastes so incredible there. And then when you get it home, watching it in front of the latest episode of Reacher, it’s just not that great. you know, yes, it’s still great. It’s still great, but it’s a different that’s a different kind of moment. Not that I’m drinking wine in front of Reacher. It’s one of life’s great pleasures. But I also, you know, there have been experiments, great experiments where people taste totally different things in a wine based on what color it is like. The addition of food coloring to a white wine makes people taste it as though it’s a as though it’s a red wine. And and I just think what’s important about that is, is to make this into a totalizing experience.

Adam Rogers 00:45:35 To not try to tell ourselves. This is the part that I think is maybe an error. People disagree with me that the sommelier thing of like, okay, no, I’m here. I’m focused in. I look at the I’m going to do the color of it, you know, in light and I’m do the aroma, you know, you know, in a glass. And then I get a sip and I want to taste it on the front of my tongue and then the back, which is a little weird, but okay, fine. You get at least the retro nasal olfaction of it and also the taste flavors on your tongue. And then that’s it. And now I’m going to identify what that wine is and make some decisions about what the flavor notes are and whether I like it. And for somebody like me there’s there’s more there’s more of like, you know, where do we buy this bottle? And did I get it at a restaurant where they did a big show of decanting it or something, that all of those things are joyful.

Adam Rogers 00:46:19 They’re part of the fun of it also.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:21 Absolutely. I’ll drink to that. Adam, thank you so much. Where can we find you and your books?

Adam Rogers 00:46:28 Online Mine books are whatever transnational oligarch oligopoly is selling books to you at the moment are available. Amazon has them, bookshop.org has them. Bookshop.org, I guess, where you can find links to those on my website, which is Adam Rogers net. And you can also listen to me saying outrageous puns on blue Sky at Jet Chocolate. Dot net I can’t remember how blue Sky works like it, but anyway, that’s where.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:57 Yeah, well, we’ll put links to all of that in the show notes too. So if people are writing that down. So thank you so much. I mean this is just fascinating. I can’t wait to relisten to your book again. And I’ll pick up more this time. Great stories Adam. Great research, great writing. It was worth it. All that grind. It was worth it. Adam.

Adam Rogers 00:47:16 Thank you.

Adam Rogers 00:47:16 I didn’t mean to sound. I was complaining about it. I’m. I’m really glad. I’m really glad that you liked the book.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:20 That’s great. Absolutely. No, no. From one writer to another, I know I’ve been there. Well, cheers. And I hope the next one is in person at a bar sometime, maybe.

Adam Rogers 00:47:29 Lovely.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:29 Thank you.

Adam Rogers 00:47:30 Thanks for having me.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:31 All right. Thanks. Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Adam. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how does oak aging change? Wine and whisky flavor and color. Well, when you’re drinking whiskey, as Adam says, it has a beautiful amber color. And that’s all from the wood. It’s completely clear when it goes into the barrel and it’s brown when it comes out. So color is part of what changes along with all those flavors. Different spirits use different rules about how they aged them. So wine goes usually into new oak. Not always. Bourbon goes into new oak.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:12 Single malt whiskey goes into old oak. The barrels have to have been used for something else. A second fill, as they say. So they’ll use a bourbon cask or a pork cask or a sherry cask so that the whisky gets the flavour of whatever else has been in it. In the process of aging, as the temperature goes up and down, the pores of the wood open and close, and as they open, the liquid gets drawn into that layer inside the wood and then gets pushed back out again. I never knew that. So there’s this kind of back and forth process, which is why so many of the experimental attempts to accelerate aging use heat to try to cycle that faster. And it’s also why people drink more young American whiskies than European whiskies, due to the warmth and the fact that age is more quickly. Number two, what do glass gears and automatons have to do with the invention of distillation? Well, I’m glad you asked. Distillation was developed nearly 2 to 300 years ago. In the common era, people were starting to transform naturally occurring phenomena into a technology that could exist, say, in a temple or in the home.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:25 Distillation is one of those technologies, along with a lot of automatons and simple machines, gear, screws and the steam engines. They were also figuring out glass, ceramics and metals. A very exciting time. Number three why is yeast such an essential tool, both in scientific research and wine production, especially in the face of climate change? As Adam explains, yeasts are a workhorse organism in laboratories because it’s very easy to change their traits and genetics. They share DNA with each other, and when they grow, they mutate very quickly from generation to generation. So you could use classic animal or microbial husbandry techniques to change them as well. This can become especially important as climate change changes the regions that are important to wine. Places like Napa and Sonoma, are becoming too hot to grow the kind of grapes that they grow, or places like Australia get super hot and they still want to grow grapes that favor a cooler climate. So you can develop a yeast that can respond to those heat stresses and still produce more of the flavor molecules that you want from these particular strains.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:38 In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Adam, links to his website and books the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. If you missed episode 253, go back and take a listen. I chat with Jane Lopez about her emotional guide to wine and how to get a solid wine education. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Jane Lopes 00:51:06 It was the combination of all that wine offered because wine can be very academic, very intellectual. You know, I remember a lot of nights coming home from my job at the retail store and pulling out a wine book, but I really liked that that knowledge was connected to an experience, a sensory experience. I could study the wines of the northern Rhone and the soil type and the winemaking and the attributes of the grape, and then I could taste that in a glass. That to me was very exciting. And I also really loved the social aspects of it.

Jane Lopes 00:51:36 When it came down to spending my 20s in a library, or talking to people and serving great wine and pairing it with food, and the latter seemed a lot more appealing.

Natalie MacLean 00:51:47 Absolutely. I’m with you on that, because wine does get you out of your head all the time. If you’re inclined to be there and get you reconnected with your senses and your body and the emotions totally. You won’t want to miss next week. When we chat with Henry Jeffries, the author of Empire of Booze and Vines in a Cold Climate, the latter of which was shortlisted for the James Beard Awards and won the Fortnum and Mason Drink Book of the year. He joins us from his home in Kent, England. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the science of wine. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean or.

Natalie MacLean 00:52:46 Email me if you have a SIP tip question, or if you’d like to win one of eight copies of books by Adam, Fiona, Rosemary and yes, three from Henry Jeffreys. If you want to get a jump on claiming one of his books, or if you’ve read my book or listening to it, I’d also love to hear your thoughts about this episode. So email me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to take the free online food and wine pairing class with me, called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That can ruin your dinner or lunch and how to fix them forever. At Natalie MacLean. That’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. Three. Three one. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a whiskey that was aged perfection in oak. You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media.

Natalie MacLean 00:53:54 So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week.

Natalie MacLean 00:54:02 Cheers!

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