Latest Fact Sheet

Season 2, Ep 6 - Wine

· Wine contains: water 82-90%, alcohol 9-15%, carbohydrates (residual sugars) 0.1% for dry to 3.5% for sparkling.

· Greasy food delays gastric emptying – that means it slows alcohol getting out of the stomach and into the small intestine where 80% of it is absorbed. So it gives your body more time to digest the alcohol as it comes in and you don’t get drunk as quickly

· Red Wine Head Ache (RWHA) is a genuine scientific mystery – but black tea, aspirin and ibuprofen are supposed to prevent it happening. Aspirin has little effect on RWHA once it’s started. The onset of RWHA is usually about 15min after drinking.

· Sulphites are definitely not the cause of RWHA. Wine contains 80mg to 350mg of sulphites per bottle, and the human body makes about 1000mg a day itself. Only about 1% of sensitive people have a problem with sulphites because they lack an enzyme to metabolise it.

· Scientific experiments have proved that bubbles really do get you drunk faster. The theory is that the bubbles somehow stimulate gastric emptying, so the alcohol gets to your intestines and your blood quicker.

· Resveratrol which is found in red grape probably has some health benefits, but the alcohol would be doing you damage long before you got enough resveratrol from wine to do you any good. There is more in peanuts or an apple than in red wine

· A recent trend in wine is towards higher alcohol levels. Climbing fro average 11-12% in 1990s to 13-15% now. Simultaneously there is consumer demand for lower alcohol wines (around 8-9%). to quaff over lunch and still be able to work.

· The earliest record of wine-making is from an Iranian pot dating to 6000 years BC.

· New Zealand leads the world in adopting the screw cap – over 90% of our wine is sealed with screw caps.

· The bubbles in bubbly come from a secondary fermentation in the bottle.

· The English claim that they put the bubbles in Champagne by changing from a cloth closure used by the French to a gas tight cork closure that trapped the carbon dioxide created by the secondary fermentation.

· Casked wine has an expiration date because the plastic bladders actually allow oxygen to enter the wine so that it slowly goes off.

· Yeast ferments sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Wine makers often follow this up with a bacterial fermentation (called the malolactic fermentation). The bacteria convert very tart malic acid into the much smoother tasting lactic acid, thus mellowing the wine. The bacteria also create the buttery notes characteristic of wines like Chardonnay.

· ‘Fining’ means adding something to the wine to attract small particles of proteins, tannins and carbohydrates. The particles then settle out and are filtered off. Common fining agents are milk, egg white, the swim bladder of the sturgeon (isinglass) and benthonite clay.

· Central Otago has the Southernmost vineyards in the world.