StarTalk Radio - Wit and Wisdom about Wine

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

When tasting the first sparkling champagne, Benedictine monk Dom Perignon supposedly said, "Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!" It's more likely the quote originates from a late 19th century advertisement, but the sentiment is universally appealing. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson and I'm joined by comic co-host Lynn Coplitz. Lynn, welcome back. Hello. I missed you last week. Oh, yeah, sure you did. I heard you talking about how funny he was, how great it was. Bunch of jerks.

I think you'll like this subject this week. This week, the topic is wine. Why would I like that, Neil? The science of wine. Wine is good. And we have special interviews and special contributed commentary. And, you know, wine goes back 8,000 years. 8,000 years.

I would think it would go even farther. Well, if it did, we don't know. Wow, the cavemen were doing it. They were too drunk to write it down. That's right. It's all about what gets written down. And it just so happens this week, scientists confirmed the discovery of the oldest complete wine production facility ever found,imentary wine press and all the trappings of a wine production facility. You can find that in my apartment.

Wine-soaked pot shards. What the heck is a wine soaked pot shirt well you don't say that like I know what that is

a wine soaked pot shirt no no no it's what you have broken pot fragments you get you get stained wine stains on them

so it means they were receptacles back then they didn't have glass so and of course ancient Egyptian murals

show details of winemaking and of course there's the most famous reference of winemaking of them all, Noah, of Noah's Ark fame. Oh, yeah. He was a winemaker, as described in the Bible. And it's laid out.

Oh, they're trapped in that boat. How annoying. You've got to do something. Landed on Mount Ararat, planted a vineyard, harvested grapes, produced wine, and got drunk. This is what we know of the fellow. So, you know, I interviewed a master of wine. You know about master of wine? Is she a sommelier?

Well, she can be a sommelier. Not all masters of wine are sommelier. But all sommeliers are masters of wine, right? No, no. One doesn't have to be the other, but a master of wine would make a very good sommelier. Sommelier. Sommelier. To become a master of wine, you have to study for three years.

You write a thesis, and you're tested over four days. And you have to identify 36 wines blind in a blind tasting where they cover it up. You can't see it. You don't know what it is. And you have to say, what country is it from? What year is it from? What year is it from? What vineyard it's from? And you have to identify them.

And only 280 masters of wine in the world exist. I'm sorry. I'm laughing because I'm just picturing me taking this test. Indiana, Mad Dog 2020. There you go. 1967. Vintage October. October.

Tuesday. So it was Jennifer Simonetti Bryant. She's a master of wine, and she visited me in my office up at the American Museum of Natural History. And I want you to hear some of my conversation with her. All right. Let's hear how it begins. Jennifer Simonetti. There she goes.

One of my greatest moments is when someone called me a wine Jedi. You're a Star Wars nut? I'm a Star Wars and Star Trek fan. Why don't you have a lightsaber instead of just an ordinary saber? Because I don't think they actually exist. I used to have one as a kid that lights up and glows in the dark and stuff like that, but it won't work on a champagne bottle. I actually had to use this method on a bottle.

It was an enormous bottle. It was an Imperial. How many bottle equivalents? Eight. Eight bottles. And the cork wouldn't come out. Someone got half of the cork out. The cork was breaking. The cork was breaking. So half of the cork was still inside the bottle. Bad situation. And so it was a dangerous situation. And I happened in my office to have the saber and I saved the day, actually. and i took it out and and sabered it and it was the only way to get it out as opposed to waiting it was like a ticking time bomb so were you like jedi power woman i was using the force i was using the force

and you're removing the foil what's with the foil why does champagne because it's pretty um and actually part of the part of its of... Well, part of the reason why they have the foil on too is so that you don't see how far they've filled it up because some are much higher than others. Okay. So it's kind of saving the bottling line. So it looks much prettier. It's prettier.

So you don't think you're getting cheaped out by, you know, make a couple of new ones. Okay, so they're already trying to deceive us. I know, we've got the famous little... Wire cage. The wire cage. Yeah, and it always takes six twists to take the wire cage. I've never counted before.

That is so geeky of you. Three, four, five. Six. It's six twists. Oh, my gosh. And just so I know what the bottle is, this is a bottle of Brut Piper. Heidsick. Heidsick.

Yep. Very available, right? Very, very available. And what did you pay for this? That's about $32. $32, okay. What do you want to do? So she's holding the bottle in her left hand.

Whisper it, because this obviously takes concentration. Okay. Jennifer's got the bottle in her left hand. She lifts up the saber, and she is... Whoa! What? Sorry! Okay!

I'm glad I didn't point it towards the door with the glass on it. So, she just knocked off the entire upper section of the wine bottle. The cork, the neck, and there's a smooth surface there. She launched it into my office and is hidden behind who knows where. But there's a wine bottle. You didn't even pull the cork out. The cork came off with the, you broke the glass. I broke the glass. Yeah. And all you have to do. But in a really smooth, clean way. I'm told that the longest launch was 177 feet. This is something geeks have to get together and beat. We've got to do a football

field length on that one. Now the bottle, does it have to be especially cold or actually probably launch faster if it's warmer? Well, the problem if it's warmer is that it's more combustible. And so the glass can shatter. The entire bottle. So when it works, it's perfect. But when it doesn't, you're dead. Correct. Okay.

So that was a bottle of champagne that we then had to drink because you couldn't re-cork it. And I didn't even know about this method where you take the top of a champagne bottle off if you had problems removing the cork, which is a problem I've never had before. I know I haven't. Everything I ever drink has a screw off top. Well, the pressure. Even your champagne is a screw off top. Absolutely. My champagne is just wine with a little sparkling soda in it.

So inside the champagne bottle is 90 pounds per square inch of pressure, which is about six times that of ordinary atmosphere. So it's dangerous. She's right. If it's too overpressured, you can shatter the entire bottle. So, in fact, you want to cool down the champagne as much as possible to reduce the pressure inside. If it's a warm bottle, it's trying to bubble itself out and it creates much higher pressure if you have a hot bottle. That's interesting.

Yeah. And it's been measured the cork can fly out at 25 miles an hour. It could put an eye out. It could put an eye out. Well, isn't that the end of a dinner party? Your guest has to come back with a patch on. Thanks for the champagne. And there's some other cool physics about wine glasses. You know, you've seen the maybe TV commercials where someone sings, a soprano sings and shatters the glass. That's actually possible to do. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. What do you do? There are certain frequencies of sound where the wine glass resonates. It vibrates just at the same frequency as your voice. wine glass resonates. It vibrates just at the same frequency as your voice. And if you then increase the volume of your voice, the vibrations get bigger and bigger, and it reaches a point where the structure of the glass can't handle it, and it just shatters. Okay. Now, I know a little bit something just because I watch the Food Network way more than anyone should, but about

what people are looking for when they're looking at champagne. But what are they looking, I mean, when they're looking at wine, but what are they looking for when they look at champagne? Because you see them hold it up and they're looking at the bubbles. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so bubbles matter and bubbles are good. That's part of what that celebration is. And it turns out that bubbles help your body absorb the alcohol faster

than it otherwise would. Really? So in fact. That explains a lot about prom. Well, so with champagne, you can get drunk faster, stay drunk longer, and then experience deeper perceptual impairments, what would normally

happen with champagne. Will it make a woman look younger? It'll make a woman look other things, but I don't think younger is among them. So, let's continue with my It'll make a woman look other things, but I don't think younger. We need to get some in here right now and feed it to our cute little intern. So let's continue with my interview with Jennifer. Am I making you uncomfortable? No, no.

Okay, go on. With Jennifer Simonetti. By the way, there are fewer female masters of wine than there are female astronauts. So she's a rare breed in the world for having this talent. Why is that? I don't know. Because they're lightweights, probably. Let's find out what she likes in wine in this next clip.

What are you tasting? It's got the bubbles and it's got a nice color. Yeah? Yeah. I'll drink a little more noisily for the radio. Well, you got to sip. I'll drink a little more noisily for the radio. Well, you got to sip.

Oh, there it is cycling through your olfactory glands. Yeah. But the great thing about champagne, I love about this champagne too, is that you can taste autolysis or the autolytic character. Autolysis is a process. I assure you there's no taste I've ever had where I thought to myself, this tastes like autolysis. That just has never come up. Never come up.

Well, with champagne, it does come up because it's laid on its side for years in these, you know, really old cellars underground. And what happens is you have the yeast cells,

they die and their cell wall breaks down. And there's all these nitrogenous compounds and acetyl compounds that go into the champagne that give it that typical toasty, biscuity. Toasty biscuity. I like toasty biscuits. I had some this morning for breakfast too. So that's why champagne makes a good breakfast wine. I never

thought about that. It takes you right through the day. Provided you can resist putting orange juice in it. That's true. I have to ask, what is the single favorite glass of wine you've ever had in your life? You know, I got to tell you, whenever life throws you a curveball or you have a really bad day at work or it's a really bad week and you sit there and try to remind, like, why am I doing this? Why am I in this industry? You're questioning your existence, the ontology of life. Yeah. And it's usually a white burgundy that brings me back. Is that right? Yeah, it's white burgundy that I, and white burgundy is made from Chardonnay.

So white burgundy completes you. It does, yeah. That's so beautiful. How about you? Me? You know, the evening comes to a close, dessert's being served, and I got to reach for a sautern. A sautern. Very sweet wine to drink after a meal.

And it just takes me to new places. And people think sweet wines, they think gummy, syrupy, and this is so not that. It's sweet without being gummy and syrupy. Have you ever tried Tokai? Yes, but it's a little, it has fewer dimensions in it for me. Unless I haven't been drinking the right. You haven't been drinking the right one. I keep hanging out with you.

Tokaj is made in Hungary, so I went on a trip through Hungary and tasted some Hungarian Tokaj that just rocked my world. So Lynn, what's your favorite wine of all time? Okay, first of all, the very end of that conversation was so she-she queer, I couldn't even listen to it. The beginning was very scientific and very interesting, but the very end, I really like a good hungarian, blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, oh, really? Is that what you lose yourself in, is a glass of red blah, blah? I don't know. I mean, you know what? I like anything that's free. That works. That totally works. A glass of free wine.

That's delicious. Well, you know, about champagne, it is said of Dom Perignon. Have you ever had a Dom Perignon? I've had Dom Perignon. I've had a glass or two. Even if you haven't, you've certainly seen it in store windows. I've had it. It's rumored that the Dom himself, upon tasting the second fermentation that makes the bubbles,

he said, I believe I am tasting the stars. Who was he? Wasn't he a monk? Yeah, he was a monk. But it's rumored that he said it, but he probably didn't. It's only really traceable to an ad campaign back in the 1800s. I am drinking the stars.

I am licking the fence. I am eating the floor. I've dated Frenchmen. They'll say anything. That's why monks don't talk, because they probably all got so drunk. Come here, Dom. Shut up and get back in bed.

I'm tasting the sauce. So you sound like you were there. I just think that's hilarious. I think I am drinking. That sounds like an ad campaign. We think it is traceable to that, but it's more fun to imagine that he said it upon first realizing. I am drinking this stuff.

But the wine has, you know, there's. Now I am licking the floor because I drank too many stuff. All right. Time for a break. Wine is complex stuff. We'll talk more about where wine gets its flavor when we come back. Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here with Lynn Cockles.

Anyhow, let's get back to wine. That's Neil. So, Lynn, wine is not just some liquid in a bottle laying down. You know, I wish I had a quote every time someone said that about me. It's not just some chick in a bottle laying down. So wine is a living product. It's born, it ages. You create it with living organisms and it gets bottled and it still continues to evolve and then like now now when they want to wine this tastes a certain way

do they just go out and say like oh we're going to make an autumn wine so we needed to have some apricot and we need a pine cone in it and all this no that's boone's Farm where they put fruit in the wine. No, they have fruit in real fancy wine. Let's go back to our special guest, Jennifer Simonetti-Brien, who visited me in my office at the Hayden Planetarium to talk about wine and how they make it. She's a master of wine.

She's a professional. 280 in the world. Here she goes. What's up with yeast? In general? Yeah, yeah yeah i just have to ask because it's in bread it's in feminine commercials it's in wine okay what is what is going on here no i'm just trying to understand yeast shows up in the darndest of places so there it is in wine and as i understand it as it's been described to me, you have grape juice. You put in some yeast.

The yeast likes the sugar. Turns the sugar into alcohol. And carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide. And then the yeast dies in its own excrement. And that's winemaking 101. That's winemaking 101. Yeah, pretty much.

So I got it right. You got it right. Yeah. And if you leave those yeast cells, let's say like for a Chardonnay, and you let it kind of sit there for a while, it'll take on a more creamy texture. There's things that they continue to excrete in order to provide to the wine. So it's not only the alcohol. We're talking about champagne, the same thing.

So it's not only the alcohol. That's just a bare minimum. The rest are further nuances that show up in the wine. Stuff from their cell walls make that toasty, biscuity character in champagne. It creates a creamy texture. These would be yeast that have died. Given their lives. It only lasts about two weeks.

Yeast that have given their cell walls for your wine drinking pleasure. That is so wrong. Also, you have producers that inoculate with one specific type of yeast, and then you have those that just kind of let it go. They just kind of let nature do whatever. Let nature do what it's going to do.

And look, yeast is all around us, and it's on the skins of the grapes as well. That kind of waxy film that you see on grapes, it's the yeast that's on there. Just let it do its thing. Because the premise is if you have one type of yeast, you're going to get a very predictable outcome. And that's what some makers really like. But that means it'll never be truly great. That's not necessarily true. But the philosophy is, if you let nature do its thing, there are thousands, if not millions, of types of yeast. And just like people, we all operate differently, look differently, smell differently. So do yeast.

So when you have that complexity of all of them working at the same time, they all produce something different. And so there's layers of flavors, which we call in wine complexity. So that's kind of that philosophy, that if you use indigenous or native yeast, that it will add layers of flavors that you wouldn't ordinarily get. So there's your flavors for you, your layers of flavors. It's just so much fun listening to your interviews sometimes, especially the ones where you're being flirty. What do you know? Oh, Neil, please.

What's up with yeast? That is the most hilarious thing. She's an expert. You're like, what's up with yeast? I want to know. In yeast? I want to know. Inquiring minds want to know. And yeast is not the only variable with wine. Because as you know, there's the ritual of pulling.

Oh, sorry. You have screw tops in your leg. No, I know something. No, no. So there's cork has been the time-tested choice of what it is to cork up a bottle of wine. But cork has gotten a bad name lately because sometimes cork fails. Cork is this porous bark of a tree. Not always because they use plastic corks too.

Exactly. So we would just call them plastics, I guess. There's a cork tree and it's the bark of the tree that is highly porous. That's why it's very light. It's a cork tree? Yeah. Where do you think it came from? We just never thought about where it came from.

I don't know. This is a science show. It could be Monsieur Corco. He was a monk from Cork, Spain. I don't know. The town of Cork. The town of Cork. So with cork, it's a bark of a tree, and they harvest it, and they use it.

What's good about it is you can squeeze it, put it in the bottle. As the cork gets wet, it then expands and makes a perfect seal. Exactly. The problem is some corks have been misbehaving, and they've been transmitting bad chemicals into the wine, prematurely aging them. In fact, the very word to be corked of a bottle has been prematurely aged. So that's why they're now experimenting with plastic corks and screw taps. Screw taps even for expensive wines.

So it's no longer a stigma to have a screw top. I know that. But it is a stigma if your wine comes in a box. I think that way. Uh-oh, Mom. Put the box down. Now, an interesting thing about wine in a box that most people don't appreciate because the wine is not actually in a box. It's in a plastic bag.

In a kidney. It's in a bag, a collapsible bag within the box in a spigot. Now, here's what's interesting. Like a big Capri Sun for grownups. Okay, yeah, yes. And so here's how it works. As you give yourself wine out of this bag the bag collapses no air gets inside the bag so the wine stays fresh the entire however long it takes you to get through the box and so

an hour until the soaps are over and so and so here's one of the biggest problems is for very expensive wines people have tried to fake them and then put them up for auction. And so what they're trying to work on now is special electric tongues, electronic tongues that can taste. Oh, my. Where does one get one of these? When?

One should need one. I'm just saying. I'm just saying, too. So you put electric and it can basically date the wine and it could tell you. It could date a lot of people. It could tell you- I know people who would date an electronic tongue right now, Neil. So through- Since wine was once alive, it has carbon-14 in it, and you can check the date of a wine

very accurately. They're working on these electronic tongues. With the tongue? With the silicon chip. It goes in, and it tells you- That's hilarious. That's so dirty. How old the wine is. You do know that would be dirty. That would be used for dirty With the silicon chip. It goes in and it tells you. That's hilarious. That's so dirty. How old the wine is.

You do know that will be dirty. That will be used for dirty purposes. Possibly. It depends on what. It absolutely will be. I'm telling you right now. So now, there's more to learn about wine. Jennifer Simonetti, our master of wine, will tell us about what the French do when they

want to claim that their wine is unique in the world. Oh, they're gross. There's a French term called terroir. Well, doesn't it just read terror? No, with an I in it. Oh, it isn't terror, but with an I. I in it, yeah. Terroir.

I think Jancis Robinson, who's also a master of wine, went through an airport that said terroirist, and she was stopped. But this term terroir is referring to everything that has to do around the vine that makes those grapes from that vine taste the way that it does. So it's a word to... There's no direct translation. So there's no English version of that word. And it's basically, it's the bin that you toss everything into that you can't otherwise identify why it works. Sort of, but there are...

Well, you just said it's the soil, it's the grapes, it's the sunlight, it's the... It's the exposure and... Exposure to sunlight. Yeah. It's all of that. Yeah. That's terroir. That's terroir.

And also, but it's kind of debatable whether or not the winemaker is also included within that element of terroir. Or the yeast, because yeast is everywhere. And different yeasts are all... Not all yeast is made the same. Exactly. So does that relate to terroir? So there's

elements that people have different definitions, but it's that je ne sais quoi that makes it taste the way that it does. Okay. Getting my French fix for the day. Oh, yeah. That was Jennifer Simonetti-Brien. And Lynn,

do you know French? Yeah. A little And Lynn, do you know French? Yeah, a little bit. How do you say that? Petit. All the French I know are from off the labels of French wines. And do you know that the French wine industry today owes its existence to grafted roots that were brought over back from America. They're not quick to admit this, but their roots were completely decimated by a louse, what's called a root louse, that totally tore up their vines and destroyed them, basically.

And our rootstocks are resistant to it. And so rather than use the entirety of our plants, they said, we're not going to take your grapes. We're going to just take your roots. So all Bordeaux and all the wines from that region are derived from American rootstocks. But they're not going to tell you. I'll tell you that, but they're not going to tell you that. But that means there's a hybridization of it. And now they're trying to do the same thing genetically. Rather than actually cut off a root and glue it together, go into the genes of the grapes themselves and create genetically modified wine. And this is freaking some people out, you know, because like French, they don't like frankenfood. You know about this?

The genetically. The stuff that makes carrots huge. What's wrong with the huge carrot? You got a problem with that? Nope. Love it. Just like. What's wrong with a huge carrot? You got a problem with that? Nope. Love it. What's a louse? Well, no, I mean, it's not like head lice.

It's lice that would attack the roots of... That's what I want to know. So it's not the same lice? This is like special French lice? I'm pretty sure it's not. I don't want to be on a head. I want to be on a vine. I am a French louse. So think about it.

If you can genetically modify the... Even your louse are annoying. I guess you are not a Francophile here. I've dated a lot of Frenchmen. Let's just leave it at that. StarTalk returns right after this. Welcome back to StarTalk. Lynn, we need to hear what your favorite kind of wine is.

You know, I really love, you're going to laugh, but I really love like Chianti, like really dry red wine. Chianti works. But I can't drink it because I'm getting older now and I get, with the sulfites, my whole face turns red. Is that right? I look like an old, broken Irish woman. There's a lot of sulfur in the wine industry. They use it to stop the fermentation and to prevent mold. It's all over. But I can drink

homemade red wine. My uncle used to make it because I'm Italian so he would make it in the basement and I could drink that. Where did you grow up? Well, I grew up in Florida and I was raised in, you know, in the south and in Florida. In the south where they make their own liquor. No, but my uncle lived in Long Island. Oh, okay. I was born in Long Island.

Oh, okay. And he made it down in the basement. He's an Italian guy. That's what they do. That's what they do. And was it good? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I was born in Long Island. Oh, okay. And he made it down in the basement. He's an Italian guy. That's what they do. That's what they do. And was it good? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I mean, for wine that was made in a basement and put in like a Sprite bottle, it was delicious.

Because there's a question for if we have long space voyages going forward, then you're away from home for years. A round trip to Mars will take at least three years. Because you've got to get there. That's nine months. And then you have to wait for Earth and Mars to realign in their orbits so that your trajectory can come back efficiently. And by the time that happens, it's three years. Will you go three years without the normal trappings of what brings pleasure to your eating experiences? They make alcohol in prison. Everybody keeps drinking. Nothing keeps you from drinking. You know, they tried to slip some sherry onto Skylab,

Skylab, America's first space station back in the 1970s. Sherry? Sherry. There are old ladies on this? They were in packets, and they delivered them to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, like in little juice bags. But NASA, being a little trigger shy there, was afraid that maybe I triggered some negative publicity for what that was about. But also, do you know that wine odors can make you sick if you're in zero G?

Some people are extra sensitive to odors, wine odors in particular, in zero G. But see, I would get sick even without the wine odors in zero G if I'm floating around. But some people, it would trigger that. So they have to be very careful how they do this and so also because just the idea of calling the astronauts like you know are you guys there listen we're gonna change the route i lost it bumpers so we're just gonna go take a look at venus real fast we'll be right back that would be bad yeah so we're we're also interviewing jenn take a look at Venus real fast. We'll be right back. That would be bad, yeah. So we're also interviewing Jennifer Simonetti-Brien.

She's a master of wine. And I asked her about just growing grapes in space and what she knew about the technology of growing wine in controlled environments. And let's see what she says. Interesting. The big question going forward is whether the multi-year mission to Mars that's being planned, whether they're going to get to take wine. Wine.

I hope so. Maybe not in glass. Maybe not. But if it's good, I'll drink it. If they can freeze it? No, it takes energy to keep it frozen. Oh, that's true. Unless you're just hanging out, you know, roll down the window.

Hang out in space. It'll freeze. And then you put it towards the sun and you can heat it up. It's your own fast thermodynamics out there. So that's an interesting question because the quality of life will matter. You want people to remain sane and happy, and if wine is a fundamental part of good living and stable psychology, then there might be some thinking about what wine they would take.

The good thing about the wine is it'll just get better. Yeah, it's true. For the TV show that I host, Nova Science Now, one of the segments that will soon air is on space food. And there's a push to try to grow vegetables hydroponically on the trip to Mars because you can't bring all the soil. It's just too complicated. So you get the right nutrients for the water and you grow the root system in the water. Has there been any attempts to grow grapes, winemaking grapes, in a pure water hydroponic environment? I'm sure there are. I haven't seen any results of that. Because if you do, then they'd have absolute control over the nutrients that the roots are.

Part of the problem with wine, and part of the magic that is wine, is that you cannot recreate a Sauternes. You can't recreate a Chateau Lafitte Rothschild. For some reason, you just can't create it in the lab. What you're saying is they're not there yet. And so they're susceptible to crediting all manner of things, most, if not all of which might have nothing to do with the product. Yet they've got to credit something to say, this is why

that's good. Or this why this tastes this way here and a few yards away. Yards away. Meters. That's very good of you. Meters. A few yards away. It tastes very, very different.

So what we're learning here, the wine is just really complex, more complex than anyone admits that they can actually understand. What I like is that, you know, NASA, we've got satellites orbiting the Earth and it's looking at Earth not only in visible light, with other wavelengths of light that sees things that the eye doesn't see. And so growers in California are teaming up with NASA to get satellite images of their vineyards that can detect chlorophyll levels in the leaves of the grape vines, also detect other properties of the health of the crops that enables them to judge exactly when

to pick and exactly when to prune. And so this is quite a collaboration that's been unfolding as we go forward. If NASA's got the satellites, I mean, why not? If it can help your harvesting. And this is what you do, like the harvest moon. It is time. Astronauts have called. Pick the wine.

Pick the grapes. Yeah, I don't think the French will use astronauts for this. I feel like there's some major resistance to what it is that technology can provide. Yeah, the French have some weird French monkey that runs in the fields and slaps himself in the head or something obnoxious. That's not the half of it. We went back to Jennifer Simonetti-Brien to talk about what the French actually believe in in the manufacture of their wine.

Is it a monkey? It might as well be, I think. But let's let... Jacques the monkey slapping himself. Let's find out what that's all about. There's something called biodynamic viticulture, and it's done by less than 1% of vineyards all around the world. But the ones that you do see are primarily in France.

The philosophy comes from a 1920s Austrian philosopher called Rudolf Steiner. So there's a philosopher in the mix here. Yes, yes, there's a philosopher in the mix here. from a 1920s Austrian philosopher called Rudolf Steiner. So there's a philosopher in the mix here. Yes, there's a philosopher in the mix here. Never a good idea to base your agriculture on a philosopher. It's been attempted in the past with great famous failures of this. I think you want to base it on science. Well, I'm going to say I don't know if I believe in biodynamic viticulture, but I'm going to tell you the philosophy and what they believe.

I'm here to listen. Go on. I will be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains spill out. Well, you have to think about it because there are some incredible producers of biodynamic wines. Producers make some of the most expensive and luxurious wines in the world, and they truly believe this biodynamic viticulture contributes to making their wines even better. Weren't they making good wines before they started basing it on the universe? Yes, but they feel everything in your whole world is connected.

So it's very new age. It's very new age. So what do they do? What's an exam? You have the parts of a vine. So you have your roots, your leaves, your flowers, and your fruit. Each one of these things relates to... Each one of these parts of the plant.

Each of these parts of the plant, each of these four parts, relates to the four components of existence that's been throughout the ages. Air, water, earth, and fire. So the famous Aristotelian elements. All the elements. And of course the music group from the 70s.

Earth, wind, and fire. They left out the air, the hot air. I don't know what happened to their air that was their agent their agent there's wind and fire there's air meet him all right so they've got these aristotelian elements which we learned in the discovery of the periodic table of elements that they're quaint remnants of a distant past that's right the. The four elements. They feel that they're connected. So during the descending moon cycle, that they see that where the sap from the plant goes into the roots, that's where they think that you can do pruning then, but you can't do other types of activities during that time.

And then in the rising moon cycle, when the sap is rising, that's when you can do grafting and other types of rising moon mean waxing moon waxing and waning as the moon grows to full and then right it goes back to new moon so there's other elements that they bring in even the zodiac signs they're bringing in astrology to us they're bringing in astrology Wow so it sounds like they really don't know why they make great wine that's what that sounds like to me I'm sorry it's a religion and they really,

truly believe that if you are doing something, when the cosmos says it's a good day to do it, then it makes better. Wine makes the wines age better, longer. Suppose the cosmos started whispering to them. Don't plant any crops this year. Don't,

don't pick it. Let the grapes rot on the vine. They're going to say, you know, Cosmos is clueless this year. We've got to make money. So, bio-Damanique, it's weird. And that's not even the weirdest part. If you actually part the curtains, there's more going on there. So, for example, according to this 1924 philosopher, Rudolf Steiner.

They're nuts. Yeah. They're even more nuts than you now know. So there are nine bio-Dominique preparations. One of them is you're going to make a compost of cow manure and quartz and silicate, basically. And you take seven medicinal plants and you prepare them in several ways. One of them is you put oak bark in the skull of a farm animal and then bury the skull in a watery environment over the winter and then dig it up and use the oak bark in the compost and then discard the skull.

This is like something out of medieval times. Another one, put yarrow flowers in a stag's bladder and hang this in the summer sun. Then you bury it over the winter, dig it up in the spring, and insert the contents of the bladder into the compost. And then you discard the bladder. This is part of what they're doing. And you ask me why I think the French are crazy. You dig it up.

You put the oak bark in the compost. You discard the skull. It will be ready in four days. So it tells me that. It's a monkey. And as long as they're still making good wine, I'm not going to stop them. I'm not going to stop them. But it's clear.

If you look at the history of people trying to figure out how the universe worked, it's clear that when you're engaged in this kind of thing, you really don't know what's going on. We'll be right back after this. Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here with Lynn Coplitz. So, wine is just one of these amazing beverages that reveals itself in all parts of culture, in all parts of rituals, and it's been with us forever. And we're going to introduce in today's program a new contributor to StarTalk Radio, Brian Mallow. So you said hilarious.

Oh, he's humorous. You're hilarious, Lynn. Anybody else is just humorous. Neil annoys me when he does that. You know what, Neil? I'm going to start doing that around you. I'm going to go, this guy is brilliant. Brilliant.

He's like a genius. So Brian Mallow, he's a scientifically literate comedian. I'll just play him. Let's find out what he has to say about wine and all that goes with it. Seems like every other day we hear of another study on the health effects of wine. But is it good for us or bad? One will say it fights heart disease. Another that it raises blood pressure. One says it increases lifespan. Another that it increases the risk of cancer. It's enough to drive you to drink. No other beverage has quite the same

stature as wine. Sure, beer is more popular, but you don't drink beer at mass. At classy restaurants, only wine gets its own special menu. And some people even have special climate-controlled chambers in their home, wine cellars that monitor the temperature and humidity for the slightest fluctuation. Well, not even the baby's room has that. Now, I'm no connoisseur. I'm not a whiny or a wino or whatever you call yourselves. I prefer a handful of grapes to a glass of wine. So I wondered, why is wine so intoxicating? What has it done to deserve such devotion? Well, I was surprised to learn that a case can be made that wine has helped save more lives than Superman. You see, although humans have been making wine for thousands of years, the process wasn't fully understood.

Until the 1850s, France's wine industry was in trouble. Wine was spoiling, profits lost. They called in chemist Louis Pasteur, like a superhero. Maybe they shined a giant spotlight into the sky with a Bunsen burner or a microscope. And he answered their call. Pasteur made some remarkable discoveries. The fermentation that changes the sugar in grapes to alcohol is not merely a chemical process, but a biological one. Yeast is a microorganism that eats sugar and excretes alcohol. Today,

a billion-dollar industry is based on the waste product of a microbe. And a different microbe was causing French wine to go bad. Pasteur figured out a solution, a heating process called, coincidentally, pasteurization, which would later be applied to milk and cheese, canned food and juices. He also realized and was able to prove that microorganisms are the cause of various diseases, and this led him to develop vaccines.

So that's how a problem with the French wine industry led directly to the development of the germ theory of disease, and to modern health practices like disinfecting surgical instruments, vaccinations, and pasteurization, which have doubled the human lifespan, giving us that much more time to drink wine. So the next time you raise a glass, take a moment to remember Louis Pasteur, super chemist, and the little unsung heroes, the yeast, the true micro brewers, then and now. And if someone gets snooty with you,

remind them they're drinking yeast pee. For StarTalk Radio, I'm Brian Mallett. Yeast pee. There you go. Oh, my God. Okay. Yeast pee was funny, but. That's Brian Mallow.

So he actually does conventions and things. Yes, he does. So we're going to hear from him again in future shows. I hope so. Well, he'll be there. So you realize, you ever hear of the French paradox? Neil's trying to replace me with yeast pigs.

Lynn, you are irreplaceable. What is the French paradox? Bathing and existing? The French paradox and it's generally called there's several variations on it. One of them is the Mediterranean diet that's very rich in cheeses and other fats.

And the French diet is rich in butter and all these things that would normally clog your arteries. Chocolate and red wine. Yeah, all of these things. In particular, the high fat content of their food. Yet, they have some of the lowest incidence of heart disease compared with other nations that don't have this. And so the question is, what is different about France compared with other parts of the world? And people found that if you have a healthy, healthy dose of red wine, that this combats,

this may combat these other factors that would put your health at risk. But the problem is these are all epidemiological studies, which means you can't herd everyone into a room and force them to eat one thing or drink something and then test them later. You have to get them sort of in their situation. And so the control on the data is much, much less refined. And it may be that the people who drink beer are not as highly sort of economically privileged as those who drink wine, and those who drink wine then have a greater sense of their health. So it could be just a correlation rather than a cause and effect. Oh, maybe.

That still needs to be determined. Can't we just take a baby and start, like, as it gets old enough to drink wine, just study it? I guess so. Like a little six-year-old French kid? I think there are laws against that. And then get another one, give that one six-year-old French kid beer, and the other one wine. Stick them in a box and just test them the whole time.

And cheese and butter. That would be an ideal undoable experiment. But I happen to like butter, you know. Who doesn't? Do you remember that TV show, The Two Fat Ladies? It was a cooking show. Don't look at me when you say that. It show, The Two Fat Ladies? It was a cooking show. Don't look at me when you say that. It was called The Two Fat Ladies or The Two Fat Chicks or something.

It was some – and they were chefs. They were like celebrity chefs. And one of them died of lung cancer but not of anything related to her physical health. She was 71. And they were really large and they rode a motorcycle. That was an odd thing. But they would be slathering their food with sticks of butter. And

ever since then, I've tripled my consumption of butter. My friend Paula Deen. Paula Deen puts a lot of butter in everything. Butter's good. You say, how much, Miss Paula? She goes, just until there's enough. What is that? How do you judge that? Until it doesn't taste good anymore.

I don't know. Until it starts leaking out. Until my pants split down the back like they did today. Is that what happened to you? Yeah. Okay, I won't comment on that. A lot of butter. It's too much butter.

All right, that's it for this episode of Star Talk. Thanks, Lynn. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.