How can I tell the authenticity of the wine I bought for my dad?

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How can I tell the authenticity of the wine I bought for my dad?

The method is very simple and only requires a pair of hands.

The specific steps are: after washing your hands, pour a small amount of the wine to be identified into the palm of your hand, rub your hands as quickly as possible until your palm is warm and dry; then, smell the palm of your hand. If the palm of your hand has a pungent chemical smell, it means that the wine is blended with chemical reagents and is fake or low-quality wine, so please do not drink it. If the palm of your hand has a sour smell of grain fermentation, it means that the wine is made from fermented grains or fruits and is of higher quality. Some wines have edible alcohol blending ingredients, but the proportion is low and difficult to detect.

In general, this hand-rubbing wine tasting method is very convenient and scientific. So why can we judge the authenticity of wine based solely on the sour taste after hand rubbing?

The reason is simple. The main components of wine include alcohol and acidic substances, and the taste of alcohol (mainly ethanol, that is, alcohol) is strong and irritating, which can easily mask the taste of other substances. Rubbing your hands together to generate heat causes the ethanol with a low boiling point to evaporate, and the unique sour taste produced by grain fermentation appears.

The acid substances in wine mainly include acetic acid and lactic acid. Among them, acetic acid is the acid with the highest content in wine, and its sour taste can bring people a sense of pleasure; lactic acid can make the wine thick and beneficial to human health. Since this complex sour taste is difficult to obtain by blending industrial alcohol, we can use it to identify the authenticity of the wine.

In fact, this hand-rubbing wine tasting method was once circulated in the market, but it was not widely used. It is a pity that such traditional technology has been lost. I only learned about it from this book "Wine Changes". How can wine lovers not read this book written by a sauce wine brewing expert who is known as the "Steve Jobs of the Chinese liquor industry"?

Author: Wang Wei

Source: WeChat official account of China Science and Technology Press