FIU enology professor Barry Gump, teaching a wine class to hotel/restaurant students at a Chinese university (pictured at right) this semester, gave them a lesson in the bitter elements in big, red wines, and found them to be an acquired taste that most of them, being unfamiliar with Western wines, had not acquired.
He writes: Last evening we had our first exam, and I believe that most of the students survived it. The previous evening we did an exercise on one’s sensitivity to bitterness. Bitterness is a true taste, and usually is not something you can pick up in the nose. Somewhere I read that we have some 50 different ways to sense bitter, and what may be bitter to you is not to someone else.
I use a test kit to demonstrate our different abilities to sense bitter. The kit uses little test strips with one of three chemicals on them – chemicals known to produce a bitter, super bitter, or non-bitter response depending on one’s genetic background. With two dominant genes one is a super-bitter taster, with one dominant and one recessive gene, one is a bitter taster, and with two recessive genes, one is a non-taster – for these specific compounds.
In most of my past classes with students from many different ethnic backgrounds, I find about one-forth of the class are super tasters, about one half are tasters, and the final one-forth are non-tasters. I like to do this exercise because I am a non-taster, and not bothered by these bitter compounds.
To my surprise I found that about half of my Tianjin class are super tasters and only a few are non-tasters for the three compounds.
I explained to my class that given the different responses across the room one should understand why the wine you are enjoying is not liked at all by your drinking companion.
Following our exercise I served an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon and an Australian Shiraz to the class and I thought you might like to see some of the students’ comments. Jiang Feng said “this wine (the Cabernet) has bitter taste in it, but not super bitter. It also has vegetable taste in it. It’s a little bit sour too. The Shiraz has no bitter taste in it. It’s also sweet and spicy. A little bit sour, milky and fruity.“
Another student, Li Lingli, stated that “Both of the wines we tasted today have the flavor of bitter. For the Shiraz wine, the degree of the bitterness is bitter. The Cabernet wine is super bitter.”
It’s not too surprising that these two robust red wines are to date the least enjoyed by my class. There were a lot of grimaces and unhappy faces during this tasting. I can believe that these wines would be among those that might be “cut” with a cola beverage!
Prof. Gump also continues his description of what it’s like to live in China for a month.
Went into town with Mr. Fu, our usual taxi driver to visit a travel agency; Kitti and I are traveling to Xi’an tomorrow morning. Traffic was as usual, chaotic, with an amazing mix of bicycles, cars (a lot of taxicabs), busses, and a few delivery trucks. Lane markings were, as usual, for suggestion only, and bicycles do not seem to be bound by any traffic signals or rules. At one intersection as the light turned green for us to go, bicycles heading from right to left on the cross street continued to move across the intersection until finally blocked off by passing cars. One rider had to jump off his bicycle to avoid hitting the passing car – the one with the right-of-way – and then moved forward, as soon as that car had passed forcing the next car in line to pause. A great game of “chicken” being played out on the roads every day.
On the way back to school we traveled along one section of a new freeway – with directional arrows clearly painted on the roadway. No surprise, I suppose, when I saw three bicycle carts coming towards us in our “fast” lane. The amazing thing is that I have only seen one accident on the streets since arriving – these drivers must have great reflexes to keep avoiding others who casually pull into the same lane without adequate space or a signal!
Comments