science

Home
science

2012 Redux: The Food Science of Wine and Chocolate

Erika Szymanski
Features
2 min read
Palate Press has selected our top ten stories from 2012 and will publish a 2012 Redux article each weekday until January 4, 2013. These stories highlight our featured columnists, widely recognized contributors, and most popular works published through the year. The Palate Press editorial board hopes you enjoy these highlights as we look

Yeast Martyrdom: Toasty Flavors in Your Sparkling

Erika Szymanski
Feature Stories
5 min read
Traditional wassails were—and still are, I suppose—seasonal hot drinks made with wine or beer, sugar, spices, eggs, and bits of toast floating on top. Today, we’re far more likely to find toasty, bready flavors in a more fashionable (and still seasonally appropriate) beverage: methode champenoise sparkling wine. How those characteristic

Sugar, Part II: What Does Acid Do?

Erika Szymanski
Feature Stories
4 min read
People who concern themselves with "consumer acceptability" of fruit know that sugar is a pretty good predictor of how consumers will feel about a given apple or grape or orange; the more sugar (that is, the higher the °Brix level), the more people like the fruit in question. But the

Palate Press Columnists Win at 2012 Roederer Awards

Tom Mansell
Feature Stories
6 min read
Palate Press was well-represented among the winners at this year's Louis Roederer International Wine Writers' Awards.  Columnist Erika Szymanski was awarded the Emerging Wine Writer of the Year award and columnist Evan Dawson won the International Wine Book of the Year award for his book, Summer in a Glass: The

What the Heck is Residual Sugar?

Erika Szymanski
Features
7 min read
Residual sugar seems like an obvious concept. Residual sugar. Sweet stuff, left over. In wine. But like many concepts in the wine world, it’s not that simple. Yeast eat sugar to make alcohol. This much we all know. So why would the yeast stop before all the sugar is gone?

Are You Wine Intolerant?

Erika Szymanski
Features
4 min read
By asking if you’re wine intolerant, I’m not asking whether you’re one of those folk who can’t stand walking into a wine shop, or watching your host spend minutes perusing the wine list at dinner, or listening to (so-called) wine-snobs describe the contents of their glasses in detail. You probably