Recent content by Greg Hirson

When my labmates were developing an analytical method to measure glycosidically bound aroma compounds, they used both b-glycosidases and acid hydrolysis. The b-glycosidases better preserved the aroma compounds from acid-induced rearrangements, but the acid treatment was quite harsh in that case.

Steve, do you have any of these wines left? I have a professional interest in how they are doing.

Though purely decorative, I'm not certain that tin capsules will spin down properly on a bead with a channel running through it.

This may be of interest to you all. UC Davis is working on annotating Maynard Amerine's collection of wine labels - about 5,000 from the late 1800's through the 1950's. They have started a crowdsource project to do the work of identifying and annotating text, but you can also just browse...

That is a sampling error waiting to happen.

The not so easy "trick" is figuring out what the key aroma molecules are. Most of the time they won't be so lucky to find one compounds responsible for one aroma (except maybe green pepper and methoxypyrazine). GC isn't going to give them the answer beyond perhaps making generic "plastic pool...

It turns out the search feature works. Levi, I as just down in the University of California cellar and pulled out ~6 Xerez-Quina/Quinado wines that we are going to build a tasting around, which is pretty exciting as I don't think most of the wines exist anywhere anymore. The sherry in...

I noticed something very similar in a skin contact white wine I made in 2011 (in Virginia). It was very oxidative and dark orange at bottling, then the equilibrium seemed to shift back and forth in bottle on a 2-3 month cycle - sometimes they were very fresh and light colored and interesting...

Chris and Alysha at Vesper are making some fun, interesting wines. I'm glad had a chance to taste their wines.

Estimates are 200-400 beetles/ton (http://www.vitis-vea.de/admin/volltext/w1%2007%20643.pdf) and 0.27 beetles/cluster (http://www.ajevonline.org/content/58/4/518.short)

I second Vesper. Alysha and Chris are great people. Max at Kogod Wine Merchant could also point you in the right direction.

I wish I had used this as the final line of my thesis.

Innovations from a Napa Estate

While poisonous at 1x, it actually becomes a remedy for countless ailments after 25-30 1:100 dilutions.

Apparently distillation only removes most of the gluten. I'm always learning new things on the internet.