About me
What I do now: Study for a second Masters degree at Washington State University. My degree program is Rhetoric and Composition, but my passion is writing and communicating about wine and wine science in particular. My current research concerns how science majors learn to write in their disciplines, and I have future projects planned on the rhetoric of wine packaging. I’ve also taken some course work in microbial enology – the microbiology of how wine is made and stored.
Where I hope to be: I’m looking for a position in which I can do what I do best: translate technical scientific language into intelligen lay-person-ese. Sooner or later I’d like to be doing that in the context of the wine industry and its publications, but I can see myself being useful and finding fulfillment in education or biological sciences publications as well.
My background: I’m a refugee from an MD/PhD program, deciding to avert a mid-life crisis before it began by leaving med school for a different road. Notwithstanding my love of medicine, I realized somewhere along the way that the life I pictured for myself when I “grew up” didn’t have much to do with the lives of the clinician-scientists I saw twenty years ahead of me. I made the excruciating decision to change fields. After some hunting and pecking — and a lot of flack from people who said I was giving up or who wondered why I wanted to reduce my future salary by half or more — I am now finding the various elements of my life melding into a congruent whole in a perfectly delightful and delightfully refreshing way.
Where I am: Washington State University is in Pullman, WA, on the far Eastern side of the state. This is the Palouse, the land of rolling hills and wheat fields, NOT the wet lush coastal clime of Seattle. The front of my car was plastered with tumbleweeds after my first drive into town. Washington’s major wine growing regions — the Columbia Valley, Red Mountain, Walla Walla, and Wahluke Slope AVAs — are about two to three hours drive to the southeast.
October 11, 2010 at 10:23 am
In my recent lecture in Sensory Evaluation of Wine in the Dept. of Vit. & Winery Tech. at at Napa Valley College, I concentrated on Brett. Your recent blog on Brett is the reason I quote from my lecture…”These olfactory defects in wine are common. A study by Chatonnet, et al. in 1993 tested 100 commercial wines (mostly French) and found about 1/3 of all wines had volatile phenol concentrations above perception threshold.” Quite a bit of brett acceptance.
October 11, 2010 at 11:36 am
Thanks! Indeed, I wonder if Americans have a skewed vision of the microbial world in terms of Brett in wine and, more broadly, in terms of food and wine microbiology. Perhaps in America our “blandized” palates, unaccustomed to fermented flavors by years of highly sanitized and standardized processed foods, have become less tolerant to a little Brett in wine versus the palates of our European neighbors? Then again, I’ve seen enough people enjoy that unexpected bit of barnyard that just a little bit of technical understanding of where those flavors originate might be a doorway into greater appreciation of microbial flavors in general.
How I wish that I could sit in on your lectures!
March 12, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Hello
I partiicipated in a discussion a few months ago on CM and found it most enlightening. So when I recently was asked “if there is any correlation between lactic acid in wine and lactose intolerance alergies in people?” I thought of you. Is there chemical subtleties between Lactose, Lactic acid and Lactase that could cause adverse alergic physiological manifestations specific to wine consumption?
Thanks
March 13, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Thanks for the excellent question. The good news for lactose-intolerant wine lovers is that they have nothing to fear from lactic acid in wine (or pickles, or sauerkraut, ect.) Most people who react poorly to lactose suffer from an intolerance, not an allergy; allergies are immune reactions to specific molecular shapes (“epitopes”), while intolerances can be caused by non-immune reactions. Lactose intolerance results from a deficiency in the lactase enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose in the small intestine. Since we can only absorb lactose after it has been broken down into its component parts – glucose and galactose – a lactase deficiency means that undigested lactose builds up in the intestines and causes bloating, diarrhea, gas, and other discomforts.
To the best of my knowledge, unlike lactose, lactic acid can be absorbed without first being broken down by lactase. Another pertinent consideration here is quantity: milk contains 2-8% lactose, i.e. relatively a whole lot, while wine contains much less than 1% lactic acid.
In conclusion, then, the lactic acid in wine should be of no concern to most people who need to avoid lactose. A glass of wine makes a much better companion to a good dinner than a glass of milk, don’t you think?
March 15, 2011 at 11:43 am
Thank You for your assistance. Once again – most enlightening!
Albert