Wit and Wisdom about Wine

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson and I'm joined by comic co-host Lynn Koplitz. Lynn, welcome back.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I missed you last week.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  I know, oh yeah, sure you did. I heard you talking about how funny he was, how great it was. Bunch of church.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you'll like this subject this week where this, this week, the topic is wine.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Why would I like that, Neil?

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The science of wine. Wine is good. And we have special, special interviews and special contributed commentary. And you know, wine goes back 8,000 years. 8,000 years.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I would think it would go even farther.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if it did, we don't know.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How the cavemen were doing it.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  They were too drunk to write it down.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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, dating back 4,000 B.C. And it's a cave in southern Armenia. And they found, now, how do you know it was a production facility?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They found grape seeds and withered grapevines and, and the remains of pressed grapes and, and something that looks like a rudimentary wine press and, and all the, all the trappings of a, of a wine production facility.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  You could find that in my apartment. That doesn't mean...

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wine-soaked pot shards and...

• 1:43Speaker 01

  So... What the heck is a wine-soaked pot shard?

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you, no, no, you...

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Don't say that like I know what that is.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, no.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  A wine-soaked pot shard?

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, it's what you have.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's definitely a facility.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Broken pot fragments. You get, you get stained, wine stains on them. So it means they've, they're receptacles back then. They didn't have glass.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was a winemaker as described in the Bible. And it's, it's, it's laid out...

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Well, they're trapped in that boat.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got...

• 2:16Speaker 01

  How annoying. You gotta do something.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Landed on Mount Ararat, planted a vineyard, harvested grapes, produced wine, and got drunk. This is the, this is what we know of the fellow. So you know, I interviewed a master of wine. You know about ma- master of wine?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Is she a sommelier?

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's a, well, she can be a sommelier. Not all masters of wine is a sommelier, uh, but

• 2:39Speaker 01

  But all sommeliers are masters of wine, right?

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. One doesn't have to be the other, but a master of wine would make a very good sommelier.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  It's a sommelier.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sommelier. They, to, to become a master of wine, you have to study for three years, and you write a thesis, and you're tested over four days, and you have to identify thirty-six 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 vineyard it's from? And you have to identify them. And only, only two-hundred-and-eighty masters of wine in the world exist.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I'm laughing because I'm just picturing me taking this test. Indiana Mad Dog Twenty Twenty.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Nineteen sixty-seven.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vintage October.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  October. Tuesday.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, 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, I want you to hear some of my conversation with her.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's hear how it begins.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Jennifer Simonetti.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There she goes.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  One of my greatest moments is when someone called me a wine Jedi.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a Star Wars nut?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  I, I'm a Star Wars and Star Trek fan.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't you have a lightsaber instead of just an ordinary saber?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  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, uh, an enormous bottle. It was an Imperial.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many bottle equivalents is that?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Uh, eight. Eight bottles. And the cork wouldn't come out. Someone got half of the cork out.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cork was breaking.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  The cork was breaking, so half of the cork was still inside the bottle.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bad situation.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So were you like Jedi, power woman?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I was using the Force. I was using the Force.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're removing the foil. What's with the foil? Why does champagne have-

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Cause it's pretty. Um, and actually part of the-

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is part of its, of the legacy of the-

• 4:44Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  So it's kind of saving the bottling line. So it looks much prettier. So you don't think you're getting cheaped out by, you know, make a couple of-

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So they're already trying to deceive us.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. We've got the famous little-

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Wire cage.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wire cage.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  And it always takes six twists to take the wire cage-

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd never counted before. That is so geeky of you.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Two, three, four, five. Six.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's six twists. Oh my gosh.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just so I know what the bottle is, this is a bottle, uh, brute Piper-

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Heidzik.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heidzik.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very available, right?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Very, very available.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what is, what did you pay for this?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Uh, about thirty-two dollars.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thirty-two dollars. Okay.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  What you want to do-

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's holding the bottle in her left hand. Uh, whisper it because this is, obviously takes concentration.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jennifer's got the bottle in her left hand. She lifts up the saber and she is-

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I'm glad I didn't point it towards the door with the glass on it.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 it's 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.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  I broke the glass. Yeah. And all you have to do-

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in a really smooth, clean way.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  I'm told that the longest launch was a hundred and seventy-seven feet.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is something geeks have to get together and eat. We've gotta, we've gotta 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?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Well, the problem if it's warmer is that it's more combustible and so the glass can shatter.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The entire bottle.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Bottle can shatter.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when it works, it's perfect, but when it doesn't, you're dead.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Correct. Correct.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  I, I know I haven't. Everything, everything I ever drank has a screw off top.

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the pressure-

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even your champagne is a screw off topic.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. My champagne's just wine with a little sparkling soda in it.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, inside the champagne bottle is, is ninety pounds per square inch of pressure, which is about six times that of ordinary atmosphere. So, it's dangerous. It's, 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.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, and, and it's been measured. The cork can fly out at twenty-five miles an hour. Could put an eye out.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  It could put an eye, well, isn't that the end of a dinner party? Your guest has to come back with a patch on. Thanks for the champagne.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's some other cool physics, uh, about, uh, 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, particularly with-

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. What you do, there are certain frequencies of sound where the 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.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  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?

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so, bubbles matter and bubbles are good. Uh, 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.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in fact-

• 8:44Speaker 01

  That explains a lot about prom.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, well, so with champagne, you can get drunk faster, stay drunk longer, and then experience deeper perceptual impairments, what would normally happen with-

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Really?

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With champagne, above all-

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Will it make a woman look younger?

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me get women look other things, but not, I don't think younger.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  We need to get someone here right now and feed it to our cute little intern.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, let's continue with our, my interview with Jen.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Am I making you uncomfortable?

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Okay, go on.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Jennifer Simonette Bryant.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Simonette.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, by the way, she's, there are fewer female, 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.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Why is that?

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't know. I, I, I, I don't know.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Cause they're lightweights, probably.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what she likes in wine in this next clip. What are you tasting? It's got the bubbles and the, it's got a nice color.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll drink a little more noisily for the radio.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Oh, you gotta sip.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they're, they're just cycling through your olfactory glands.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Hmm. 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.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  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, uh, cellars underground.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Toasty biscuity. I like toasty biscuits. I had some this morning for breakfast too, yeah? So that's why champagne makes a good breakfast wine. I never thought about that.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It takes you right through the day.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Provided you can resist putting the orange juice in it.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to ask, what is the single favorite glass of wine you've ever had in your life?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  You know, I gotta 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 in there and try to remind, like, why am I doing this? Why am I in this industry?

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're questioning your.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Existence.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ontology of life.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's usually a white burgundy that brings me back.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's white burgundy that I, and white burgundy's made from Chardonnay and, um...

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So white burgundy completes you.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  It does. Yeah.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's so beautiful.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  How about you?

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Me?

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, the evening comes to a close, desserts being served, and I gotta reach for a sauteur.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  A sauteur.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very sweet wine to drink after a meal, and 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.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Have you ever tried tokai?

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but it's a little, it has fewer dimensions in it for me, unless I haven't been drinking the right.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  You haven't been drinking the right wine?

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I gotta hang, I keep hanging out with you.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, tokai is made in Hungary, so I went on a trip through Hungary and tasted some Hungarian tokai that just rocked my world.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lynn, what's your favorite wine of all time?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Okay, first of all, the very end of that conversation was so sheeshy 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. And you're like, oh, really? I like, is that what you lose yourself in, is a glass of red blah, blah? Um, I don't know, I mean, you know what, I like anything that's free.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works, that totally works.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  A glass of free wine, that's delicious.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know, about champagne, it is said of Dom Perignon, have you ever had a Dom Perignon? Surely you've.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  I've had Dom Perignon, I've had a glass or two.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if you haven't, you've certainly seen it in store windows.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I've had it.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's rumored that the Dom himself, upon tasting this second fermentation that makes the bubbles, he said, I believe I am tasting the stars.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Who was he, wasn't he a monk?

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's 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 eighteen hundreds.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I think I am drinking the stars, I am licking the fans, I'm eating the floor. I've dated Frenchmen, they'll say anything.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  That's why, that's why monks don't talk, because they probably all got so drunk. Dom, come here Dom, shut up and get back in bed. Oh, I'm tasting the sauce.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this, so you sound like you were there?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I just think that's hilarious. I think I am drinking this. That sounds like an ad campaign.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so they think it is traceable to that, but it's more fun to imagine that he said it upon first realizing.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  I am drinking this sauce.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the wine has diff, you know, there's

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Now I am licking the floor because I drank too many sauce.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, time for a break. Wine is complex stuff. We'll talk more about where wine gets its flavor when we come back.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here with Lynn Cockles. Anyhow, let's get back to wine.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Let's Neil.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lynn, wine is not just some liquid in a bottle laying down.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  You know, I wish I had a quarter every time someone said that about me. It's not some, oh, just chick in a bottle laying down.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wine is a, is a, is a, it's a, it's a living product. It's born, it ages, you create it with living, living organisms. And it gets bottled and it still continues to evolve.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  And then like, now Neil, when they want wine to taste a certain way, do they just go out and say like, oh, we're going to make an autumn wine. So we need it to have some apricot and we need a pine cone in it and all that.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's Boone's farm where they put fruit in the wine.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  No, they have fruit in real fancy wine.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go back to our, to our special guest, Jennifer Simonetti Bryant, 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, one of only 288 in the world. Here she goes. What's up with yeast?

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  In general?

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  And carbon dioxide.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A carbon dioxide. And then, the yeast dies in its own excrement. And that's winemaking 101.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  That's winemaking 101, yeah, pretty much.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got it right?

• 15:42Speaker 02

  You got it right, yeah. And if you leave those yeast cells, let's say like for a Chardonnay. You let it kind of sit there for a while. It'll take on a more creamy texture. There's, there's things that they continue to excrete in order to provide to the wine.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not only the-

• 15:57Speaker 02

  You're talking about champagne, the same thing.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not only the alcohol. That's just a bare minimum. The rest are further nuances that show up in the wine.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Stuff from their cell walls make that toasty biscuity character in champagne. It creates a creamy texture.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These would be yeasts that have died.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given their lives. There's-

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And it only lasts about two weeks, you know?

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeasts that have given their cell walls for your-

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Enjoyment.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wine drinking pleasure. That is so wrong.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Well, but 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-

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let nature do whatever.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Do what it's gonna do. And look, yeast is all around us. And it's on the skins of the grapes as well. You know, that kind of waxy film that you see on grapes. It's, you know, the yeast that's on there. Just let it do its thing. Cause the, the premise is, if you have one type of yeast, you're gonna get a very predictable outcome. And that's what some winemakers really like.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that means it'll never be truly great.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Well, 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. Um, so that's kind of lends that philosophy that if you use indigenous or native yeast, that it will add layers of flavors that you wouldn't ordinarily get.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's your flavors for you, your layers of flavors.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  It's just so much fun listening to your interviews sometimes, especially the ones where you're being flirty.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you know?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Oh Neil, please, what's up with yeast? That is like the most hilarious thing. She's an expert, you're like, what's up with yeast?

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wanna know, inquiring minds wanna know. And yeast is not only a vari- not, not the only variable with wine. Because as you know, there's the ritual of pulling, oh, sorry, you have screw tops in your-

• 17:55Speaker 01

  No, I know something.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For other people, no, no, so there's cork has been the time-tested choice of what it is to cork up a bottle of wine. And, but cork has gotten a bad name lately because sometimes cork fails. Cork is, is this porous bark of a tree and most-

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Not always, because they use plastic corks too.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, so that we would just call them plastics, I guess. Cork is, there's a cork tree and it's the bark of the tree that is highly porous, that's why it's very light.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  It's a cork tree?

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, where do you think they, where do you think, where, where do you think it came from? We just never thought about where it came from.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I don't know, this is a science show, it could be Monsieur Corko, blah, blah, blah, he was a monk from Cork, Spain, I don't know.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The town of Cork.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  The town of Cork.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, so with cork, it's, 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 is meant, it has been prematurely aged. So that's why they're now experimenting with plastic corks. And screw tops, screw tops even for expensive wines.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Now, why is it?

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's no longer a stigma, no longer a stigma to have a screw top.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  I know that.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it is a stigma if your wine comes in a box, I think that way.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Uh oh, mom, put the box down.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, an interesting thing about wine in a box that most people don't appreciate. Because it's, the wine is not actually in a box, it's in a plastic bag.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  In a kidney.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It, it's in a, a, a, a bag, a collapsible bag within the box and a spigot. Now here's what's interesting.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Like a big Capri Sun for grownups.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, yes, and so, 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-

• 19:53Speaker 01

  An hour. Until the soaps are over.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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, so what they're trying to work on now is special electric tongues, electronic tongues that can taste.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Oh my. Where does one get one of these?

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  If one should need one. I'm just saying.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying too. So you put electric and it can basically date the wine and it could tell you.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  It could date a lot of people.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could tell you.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  I know people who would date an electronic tongue right now, Neil.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So through, through, since wine is, was once alive, it has carbon 14 in it and you can check the date of a wine very accurately with cer- they're working on these electronic tongues.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  With the tongue?

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the silicon chip that goes in and it tells you.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. That's so dirty.

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old the wine is.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  That would be dirty. That would be used for dirty purposes.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly, it depends on what.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  It absolutely will be. I'm telling you right now.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, there's a, uh, we, there's more to learn about wine. Uh, Jennifer Simonetti, our, our master of wine, will, will tell us about, uh, what the French do when they want to claim that their wine is unique in the world.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Oh, they're gross. There's a French term called terroir.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, doesn't it just read terror?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Uh, no, with an I in it.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's not terror, but with an I.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  I in it, yeah.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Terror.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  I think Jancis Robinson, who's also a master of wine, went through an airport that said terrorist and she was stopped. But, uh, 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.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a word to, it's a word.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  There's no direct translation, yeah.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Sort of, but there are.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you just said, it's the soil, it's the grapes, it's the sunlight, it's the.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  It's the exposure and.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exposure to sunlight. It's all of that.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's terroir.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And different yeasts are all, not all yeast is made the same.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get my French fix for the day.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Jennifer Semenetti-Brian. And Lynn, do you know French?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, a little bit. How do you say that? Maybe.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 were, they don't, they're not quick to admit this, but their roots were, were completely decimated by a, a louse, what's called a root louse, that totally tore up their vines. And they 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, and, and, and, uh, all the wines from that region are derived from American rootstocks.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not going to tell you, I'll tell you that, but they're not going to tell you that. But that, but that means they're high, there's some, 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, 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 they're like French, they don't like Franken food. You know about this?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. The stuff that makes carrots huge and stuff.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's wrong with a huge carrot? You got a problem with that?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Nope. Love it.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  What's a louse?

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, oh, well, no, I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's not like head lice. It's lice that would attack the roots of, of.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  That's what I want to know. So it's not the same lice? This is like special French lice?

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pretty sure.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  I don't want to be on a head. I want to be on a vine. I am a French louse.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So think about it. If you can genetically modify the.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Even their louse are annoying.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess you are not a Francophile here.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I've hated a lot of Frenchmen. Let's just leave it at that.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk returns right after this.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Lynn, we need to hear what your favorite kind of wine is.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  You know, I really love, you're gonna laugh, but I really love like Chianti, like really dry red wine.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chianti works.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  But I can't, I can't drink it because I, I'm getting older now and I get the, with the sulfites, my whole face turns red.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  I look like an old, drunken Irish woman.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a lot of sulfur in the wine industry. They used to like to stop the fermentation and to prevent mold and this, it's all over.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  But I can, I can drink homemade red wine. My uncle used to make it because see I'm Italian, so he would make it in the basement.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where did you grow up?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Well, I grew up in Florida. I was raised in, uh, you know, in the south and in Florida.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the south, where they make their own liquor.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  No, but my uncle, my uncle lived in Long Island.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  I was born in Long Island.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And he made it down in the basement. Italian guy, that's what they do.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what they do. And was it good?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I mean, for wine that was made in the basement and put in like a Sprite bottle, it was delicious.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's, there's a question for, if we have long space voyages going forward, then you're away from home for years. A trip, a round trip to Mars will take at least three years. At least, because you gotta get there, that's nine months. And then you have to wait for Earth and, and Mars to realign in their orbits so that your trajectory can come back efficiently. And by the time that, it's three years. Will you go three years without the normal trappings of what brings pleasure to your, to your eating experiences?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  They make alcohol in prison. Everybody, everybody keeps drinking. Nothing keeps you from drinking.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, they tried to slip some sherry onto Skylab. Skylab, uh, America's first space station back in the 1970s. And little, little sherry.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Sherry? We're old ladies on this.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They were in packets and they delivered them to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and like in little juice bags. And, but NASA being a little, a little trigger shy there, was afraid that maybe that might trigger some negative publicity for what, what that was about. But also, do you know that wine odors can like 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...

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Also because just the idea of calling the astronauts, like, you know, are you guys there? Listen, we're gonna change the route.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  I lost it, Thumpers. So, we're just gonna go take a look at Venus real fast. We'll be right back.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be bad, yeah. So, we're also interviewing Jennifer Simonetti-Bryant. 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.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The big question going forward is whether the multi-year mission to Mars that's being planned, whether they're gonna get to take wine.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Wine, I hope so. Maybe not in glass.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe not, but if it's good, I'll drink it.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  If they can freeze it, you think?

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because it takes energy to keep it frozen.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Oh, that's true.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you're just hanging out the back, you know, roll down the window, hang out in space. It'll freeze. And then you put it towards the sun, then 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. And the good thing about the wine is it'll just get better.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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, wine-making grapes, in a pure-water hydroponic environment?

• 28:28Speaker 02

  I'm sure there are. I haven't seen any results of that.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you do, then they'd have absolute control over the nutrients that the

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but part of the problem with wine, and part of the magic that is wine, is that you cannot recreate a Saturn. You can't recreate a Chateau Lafitte Rothschild. For some reason, you just can't create it in the lab.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Or this why this tastes this way here and a few

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yards away.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yards away.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meters. That's very good of you.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Thank you, meters. A few yards away, then it tastes very, very different.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 grapevines, also detect other properties of the health of the crops that enables them to judge exactly when to pick and exactly when to prune.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  It is time. Astronauts have called. Pick the wine. Pick the grape.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't think the French will use astronauts for this. I think, I feel like there's some major resistance to what it is that technology can provide.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, the French have some weird French monkey that runs in the fields and slaps himself in the head or something obnoxious.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not the half of it. We went back to Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan to talk about what the French actually believe in, in the manufacture of their wine.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Is it a monkey?

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might as well be, I think, but let's let...

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Jacques the monkey is slapping himself.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what that's all about.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  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 1920's Austrian philosopher called Rudolf Steiner.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a philosopher in the mix here.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, there's a philosopher in the mix.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Well, I'm gonna say I don't know if I believe in biodynamic viticulture, but I'm gonna tell you the philosophy and what they believe.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm here to listen. Go on. I will be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains spill out.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Well, you have to think about it because there are some incredible producers of biodynamic wines. You know, 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.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weren't they making good wines before they started basing it on the universe?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yes, but they feel everything in your whole world is connected.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's very new age?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  It's very new age.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do they do? What's an example?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  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...

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Each one of these parts of the plant?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  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.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the famous Aristotelian elements?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. All the elements.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, the music group from the 70s.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They left out the air, the hot air. I don't know what happened to their air.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  That was their agent.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their agent, earth, wind, and fire. Here's air. Meet him. 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.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The four elements.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  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...

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So rising moon, you mean waxing moon, waxing and waning? As the moon grows to full and then goes back to new moon?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  So there's other elements that they bring in, even the zodiac signs.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're bringing in astrology, too?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Yes, they're bringing in astrology.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  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...

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So suppose the cosmos started whispering to them, "Don't plant any crops this year." Don't.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Don't, don't pick at all.

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't pick it. Let the grapes rot on the vine. They're gonna say, you know, Cosmos is clueless.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  We gotta make money.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So biodemonique, 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.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  They're nuts.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stein, yeah, that's the, they're even more nuts than you now know. So there are nine biodemonique preparations. One of them is you're gonna make a compost of cow manure and quartz and silica, basically. And seven, 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, this is like something out of, you know, out of medieval times. Another one, put yarrow flowers in a stag's bladder.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Wee, wee, wee.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hang this in the, 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 so.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  And you ask me why I think the French are crazy. This is, you dig it up, you put the oak bark in the compost, you discard the skull. It'll be ready in four days.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it tells me that.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  It's a monkey.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as long as they still making good wine, I'm not gonna stop them. I'm not gonna 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.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here with Lynn Copeland. So wine is just one of these amazing beverages that is, reveals itself in all parts of culture and all parts of rituals. And it's been with us forever. And we have a, a, we're going to introduce in today's program, a new contributor to StarTalk Radio, Brian Mallow.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  So you said hilarious.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he's humorous. You're hilarious Lynn. Anybody else is just humorous.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian Mallow, he's, he's, he's a scientifically literate comedian and

• 36:27Speaker 01

  I'll just play him.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I'll tell you if he's hilarious.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find out what he has to say about wine and all that goes with it.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  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.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  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.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  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.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  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, superchemist, and the little unsung heroes, the yeast, the true microbrewers, then and now. And if someone gets snooty with you, remind them they're drinking yeast pee. For StarTalk Radio, I'm Brian Mallow. Yeast pee.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeast pee, there you go.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Oh my god, okay, yeast pee was funny, right?

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Brian Mallow, so he's, he actually does conventions and things, so.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yes, he does.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's gonna, we're gonna hear from him again in future shows.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he'll be there. So you realize, you ever hear of the French paradox?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Neil's trying to replace me with yeast pee.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, you are irreplaceable.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  What is the French paradox? Bathing and existing?

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the French paradox, and, and it's generally called, it's, there are several variations on it. One of them is the Mediterranean diet, that's very rich in cheeses and, and, and other fats. And the French diet is rich in butter, and all these things that would normally clog your arteries.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Chocolate and red wine.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all of these things. Well, it's, in particular, the high fat content of their foods. 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, uh, 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.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That still needs to be determined.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Can't we just take a baby and start, like, as it gets old enough to drink wine, just study it?

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess so.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Like a little six-year-old French kid?

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think there are laws against that.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  And then get another one, give that one six-year-old French kid beer and the other one wine.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stick them in a box and just test them the whole time.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And cheese and butter.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An ideal undoable experiment.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  [laughing]

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I happen to like butter, you know, and, and, who, do you remember that TV show, The Two Fat Ladies? It was a cooking show.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Don't look at me when you say that.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was called The Two Fat Ladies, or The Two Fat Chicks or something. It was some, some, and they were, they were chefs. They were like celebrity chefs. And one of them died of, 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 a, it was an odd thing. But they, they would be slathering their food with sticks of butter. And ever since then, I've, I've tripled my consumption of butter.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  My friend Paula Deen, Paula Deen puts a lot of butter in everything.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Butter's good.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  You say, "How much, Miss Paula?" And she goes, "Just until there's enough."

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When is that? How do you, how do you judge that?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Until it doesn't taste good anymore. I don't know.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, until it like starts leaking out.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Till my pants split down the back like they did today.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what happened to you?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm not gonna, I won't comment on that.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Lot of butter.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I won't, it's too much butter. All right, that's it for this episode of StarTalk. Thanks Lynn, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.