London Gastronomy Seminar #2 · 2010-01-22 00:06
Great LGS again tonight, looking at wine and coffee. We were also given a sample of a very interesting white wine (macerated, unusual for white wine) – it was yellow, cloudy, smelt of sweet apples, tasted herbal, slightly metallic. Also, two samples of coffee, one tasted quite traditional to me, but the second was mindblowing – smell of farmyards, just about turning perfumed/bergamot when drunk. Showed just how different coffee can be.
Definitely something worth unpicking about how context and knowledge changes perception – of taste, quality, and worth. Russell’s spoken before about pre-experience design (particularly with luxury goods), and there’s some interesting science going on in this domain. I’m also interested in how genetics play a part – much like modern pharmacology. The idea that a wine tasting is an interaction between taster and wine rather than a scientific report feels right, and an extension of a lot of thinking about experience design.
Rough notes:
Flavour of Wine – Jamie Goode
PhD in plant biology, science editor, started a blog about wine (wineanorak.com ).
Single species – vitis vinifera – 1000s of varieties.
Vines – freeloaders, grows up trees, when hits sunlight it grows a bunch a grapes.
Great vineyards – low vigour, enough water (reducing later in growing season), cooler temperature during final stages, low disease pressure (no harvest rain), low frost, hail risk.
Terroir – sense of place.
Burgundy is the test case. Wines from adjacent fields processed in the same way – 900 euro difference per bottle.
Choices:
when to pick? – when they are ripe, but when within that is an important stylistic choice.
de-stem? inoculate with yeast or use natural on the grape skins? immediate or delayed fermentation? (for red wine) maceration – how? in what? post-ferment maceration (using CO2)?
Extra pressings from the must – normally kept separately as different flavour.
Barrels?
Elevage – raising of the wine. Benefits from oxygen in very small doses (that barrels give, even if neutral in taste). Or use stainless steel. Or now, concrete eggs.
Wine tasting – think of it as an interaction between taster and wine – context, experience. The information around changes the perception.
Quite literally – stick ‘em in an MRI!
Sommeliers vs. novices – they use different parts of the brain when tasting wine.
There’s lots of higher-order processing in our senses.
Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness – study showing that knowing the price of the wine changes the perceived taste.
Things like interesting creative wine writing can change perception.
From Q&A:
Biodynamics?
Interesting but weird, for a scientist. Lots of the best wine growers have converted – and the wines get better/more interesting. Need to look more carefully at the parts of biodynamic preparation, work out how and what works.
Cork vs. screw caps?
There is a difference – 2 kinds of screw caps too. Tin+saranex and just saranex. Tin + saranex means very little oxygen transmission – conditions, develops differently.
*****
Flavour in Coffee – James Hoffman
Started in 2004. 2006 – won UK Barista Championship. THere were 2 coffees in the blend – one from El Salvador. Was invited over, went to see his 1st coffee farm.
Tried a ripe coffee cherry – sweet, tart, watermelon taste.
It gives context to how coffee is experienced.
Creation:
The moment you pick the cherry, creation stops. Cannot make it better – but you can obscure or degrade if not handled well.
Most coffee ripens red (some yellow, orange).
Not as advanced an industry as wine – but terroir – weather, soil, altitude – do make a difference.
Great coffee need altitude – slower grown, denser beans.
knowing it’s “from Brazil” means nothing – 2/3rds the size of Europe.
Volcanic soils, phosphorous in soil (Kenya) do give taste differences.
Many varieties of coffee. Combination of right variety in the right place with the right microclimate – coffee that sells for $130 a pound, rather than $1.
Yield. Lower yield gives better coffee.
Ripeness. Coffee doesn’t ripen uniformly. Up to 3 stages of fruit on the same branch (due to rain). Have to hand pick, many times – expensive.
Cup characteristics – sweetness, aromatics, acidity. From cherry, terroir, and processing.
Coffee beans grow inside a parchment casing, inside the mucilage, inside the skin.
3 main ways of processing/removing beans from fruit.
Natural/dry process – just laid out in the sun. Some will go bad. Can be positive in done carefully.
Pulped Natural Process – Pulped by machine, then dried using sunlight.
Washed process – most desirable due to less defects. Normal for single estate coffee.
Then the beans are hand sorted to remove any defects.
Roasting:
Roast depth. Initially smells of rice, then baked bread. Boils off all water before interesting flavours can occur. First crack – beans double in volume due to gas pressure, then crack to release.
Believes in roasting as transparently as possible, not to mask flavours.
Roasting removes acidity (no natural sweetness, sugars all react) but adds bitterness. Looking for point of balance.
Different roasting philosophies – Scandinavia: lighter, more acidic, West Coast: v.dark roast/charcoal/Starbucks. UK: no defined character. Italy: N Italy lighter than S Italy.
Extraction:
Most frustrating part. Most coffee sold is horrible – due to poor extraction.
Coffees have a recipe (amount/temperature/time).
How much do you use? Test the coffee, as dissolved in water – refractometer, TDS meter. 18-22% extraction – generally perceived as good. (average for Europeans, some differences per country, and chart was drawn in 1965 – currently being updated).
Strength – technically – ratio solubles to solvent.
+ personal preference
60g of coffee = 12g of coffee dissolved for right extraction.
Common mistakes:
If not enough dissolved – people use more coffee. But – then underextracted. Instead use hotter water, finer grind, longer steep length.