Is seafood 'obsessed' with red wine?

It has long been known that, eating seafood and drinking red wine, then the fishy smell is very unpleasant. Red wine is only suitable for meat, while white wine is suitable for fish. Are those comments correct and why?

Is red wine only suitable for meat and white wine suitable for fish?

Researchers from Mercian Corp. In Fujisawa, Japan, famous for wine and other wines seek to clarify this.

They invited the 7 most experienced wine tasters both at home and abroad to test with 38 kinds of red wine and 27 kinds of white wine. In four rounds, these experts tasted wine samples with scallop, a seafood dish that often made people feel typical fish flavors. In parallel with sensory testing, chemists analyzed the deterioration of wine and the aftertaste of food in the mouth.

It is true that there is a phenomenon like the old rumors, experts agree. Analysis shows that the culprit is iron. When the content of this element increases above 2 mg / l, the seafood taste is very good and becomes sour and fishy.

Experts try again 2 times by dipping the dried scallop and wine samples. The dips on low-iron alcohol are normal but embedded in alcohol with high iron content, the fishy smell immediately appears.

This work has just been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The researchers say they have not isolated the substance in the scallop that works with wine, but they suspect that it is an unsaturated fatty acid. It quickly breaks down the taste in the dish and releases an unpleasant smell of fish when exposed to iron. How much iron the wine contains depends on the soil in the place of planting as well as how to harvest and process grapes. Red wine always contains more iron than white wine, so it reacts with seafood.

The Japanese chemist in charge of the research group Takayuki Tamura said: 'We were surprised by this because we thought that polyphenols and sulfur dioxide caused that phenomenon' . Because iron content is too small, not paying attention to it and through research, Japanese wine producers intend to add iron reduction during the production process.

But the opinion of American wine producers is different. They said that Japan changed the way of production is their job because the sea for them is a daily dish, and for the United States, even though the wine has a hydrophobic seafood, the more it is chosen when 'dating' to the meat, yes alright.