Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another edition of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot. I am Kristen Marie Ellis. My host is here, Jeff Carlin. What's up, dude? It's Jeffrey Peter Carlin, if we're doing a middle name thing here. Oh, I like that. That's a strong name. Your parents chose well, JPC, dig it, dig it. Today, we're talking about wine, talking about myths, debunking them, and kind of just setting the record straight. Are you afraid of anything, Jeff? Afraid of spiders. You're afraid of spiders? Yeah. It's okay. All right. Walk me through. It's Tuesday, 1030 at night. There's one of the big spiders with the butts on your wall. What kind of shriek do you make? Can you do it for me? Oh, you're okay with spiders. I mean, I'm not terrified, but I've had bad experiences over a lifetime. I feel like spiders are the devil. You've been bitten and things? I've been bitten. I've put my hand in the spider's nests, and I've had horrible things. I have one. I woke up in the morning. I was a kid, gosh, maybe like eight or nine. And I get up and I go in the kitchen, and I go to sit down and eat, and I spring up because my butt is on fire. And I kind of pulled my pajama pants down a little bit. Look, and there's this bubble of venom on my butt. And I got bitten by a big wolf spider. Oh, no. And had to go to the doctor, like, I think, drain that crap out. Yeah, those things are like super venomous. So I'm scared now. I'm scared. Anything, creepy crawler. I'm with you. There are people who are less fortunate than we are. And they have phobias that deal with wine and spirits. What? Yeah, like, I'll take a bathroom filled with spiders all night long to not have any of these phobias we're about to talk about. The first one is, and I think you say this a lot better than I do, senosilica phobia. I think you knew it. Senosilica phobia is a fear that actually I think most of us have. It's a fear of an empty glass. Oh, God, yeah. It's a real thing. So, at weddings, you know, funerals, bars. Exactly. Not in that order. Yeah. Like I always say, Tuesday, you know, after four o'clock. So sufferers experience fear of seeing an empty glass. It could be a beer glass, a wine glass, cocktail glass, you name it. But they just feel really uncomfortable if they're around a glass that's empty. I know a lot of servers in the business that are like that, too. I wish more were actually kind of like that, to be honest. So if you're listening, service industry, just fake it. Yeah, get yourself some, you know, silica phobia. Another one is methaphobia, and it is a condition that's also known as photophobia, is described as a fear of loss of control when drinking alcohol. So basically, they're either scared of losing control after drinking alcohol, or they're afraid to watch people drink. So like not your ideal date for a wedding. Yeah, or a bartender. No bartender should have this. Exactly. That would be the worst bar ever. Here's your beer. Please don't drink that, please. Caballitos, everybody. No. And for the hills. Yeah, no, that would be a bad one. Dies over the bar, saves a day. Oh, man. So seno silica phobia, fear of an empty glass. Methyl phobia is a fear of drinking or loss of control while drinking. Onomania means you can't get enough. But onophobia, which is a phobia, not a mania, the sufferer has an intense dislike or hatred for wine. So the inverse of onomania. The exact inverse, yes. Another one is zithophobia. So it really has to do with just beer. Beer just makes you freak out. All right. So that was where phobias and manias don't mix them up. We're talking about other myths, and one big thing that we get a lot, especially in the sales floor at Binny's Beverage Depot, is people come in and they're like, I don't want this wine or red wines in particular because they're going to give me headaches. I can't have anything that's got sulfites. Sulfites give me headaches, and sulfites make me hung over. And that is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's not possible. You can't get hung over from sulfites. Have you heard that before, Jeff? I know people who think that sulfites give them headaches or migraines, and people I know have said that, and I said, Oh, sure. Okay. That's a thing. It's not. First thing I ask people is this. Can you have dried fruit? Can you drink orange juice? These sorts of foods have far more sulfites in them than any given wine, especially red wine, which is the lowest in sulfites. White wine have far more. Well, sulfites are used in wine making at many different stages, but primarily they're there to act as a preservative. Sure. Sulfites exist in wine naturally. They're a natural byproduct of fermentation. You can't have a wine that's got zero sulfites. It just really doesn't exist. Impossible. You can have them super low, so those that are allergic, that would show more of an asthmatic kind of reaction, won't be affected as much. If you are making a red wine, you've got different phenolics, things like tannin and other compounds in that wine that act as an antioxidant, and you don't need as much of the SO2 to preserve the wine, to basically stop microbial spoilage. White wine is in absence of those things, so you need more SO2 to stabilize the wine longer in the bottle. That's the idea. So what we've learned is that people who feel like that, I mean, there are generally people who are allergic to sulfites. There are, but you're not going to get a headache. They get asthma. You get an asthma attack. That's what happens. As an asthmatic, I can tell you that that's not good. That is very different from getting an headache. Yep, yep. So if you drink orange juice, then you can't breathe, then you might have a sulfite allergy. But headaches are a whole other thing. So it's kind of a rabbit hole. We could go down in the medical reasons as to why you could get a headache. But the most obvious reason you're getting a headache from drinking wine is you drank too much of it and not enough water. So you're dehydrated, your brain has shrunken, you're dead headache. But also, you might be allergic to certain aspects of especially red wine. You might be allergic to the color, the phenolics and the tannin compounds, and those can give people headaches. So it's actually the histamines in your body that are giving you that headache sensation. Yeah, so you have to kind of play around with it. But the thing to really remember is if you're getting headaches, it is one glass of wine, one glass of water, and you won't have a headache. Balance it out. Exactly. So that's kind of the sulfite thing. What can you do? You can drink red wines, just low in sulfites. You can find them marketed anywhere. And that's usually something that's on a label. It'll be marketed low in sulfite or low in cyanide. Yeah, our people at Binny's, we know exactly where to point you. What are some other myths on why we need to know? Oh, here's a good one. Well, it's not really a myth, but I think it's kind of something that needs to be talked about. And it's the difference in which men and women metabolize alcohol. Right. Because people think guys or, as I call lovingly, dudes, can just drink better because they're dudes, you know? And it's true. It's not a size thing. Because I've met guys that I'm bigger than, and there are a lot of guys, most guys, I'm smaller than in some way or shape or form. So why can dudes handle alcohol better than ladies? A couple of reasons. One is men have more water in their bodies than women do. Because you have more water, you actually then dilute the alcohol easier, or it's more diluted in your bloodstream. So it takes you a longer time or more drinks to reach that BAC. That threshold, the an hour. You're actually intoxicated. Tipsy or drink. Little known fact, a protective enzyme that's in your stomach, it's called dehydrogenase, dehydrogenase. And men have it by far in higher quantities than women do in their stomach linings. Yep. And basically this breaks down oxygen in your stomach by up to 25%, if not more. So by the time the alcohol reaches your bloodstream, if you're a dude, it's just a lot less. You're already breath, breathe it out, cause it's oxygen. Yeah, based on the amount of alcohol that you drink. And women, we just don't have it. So we're going to drink the same amount, let's say you and I sit down for happy hour, we have two glasses of Fizz, I'm going to be drunker because you metabolize it faster and you have more water in your body. We're not crazy. I win. We're just drunker, faster. I think maybe some women might have more practice than others. But if you take that enzyme so far to the other side of drinking, that actually the more you drink, if you're on an alcoholic side of things, that enzyme actually disappears in your body completely, men and women, obviously first in women, but then men. So you get, as your body becomes more in need of alcohol because of dependency, you don't have that enzyme and actually it just is direct delivery. And that's when you get sick because you don't have that protective enzyme anymore. Interesting. It's weird, huh? Yeah. Human body is an amazing thing. Differences between men and women in this regard, you just never would think. It's not a size thing, right? Right. It's a science thing. Back to the leather bound books, right? Many volumes. Exactly. Any questions you have for me that you think might be right or wrong with alcohol? Well, so I have a lot of friends who have gluten allergies. They're always weary of having spirits. I never know what to tell them. I have no idea. Well, do you remember just a little bit ago when I opened the door for people to welcome them back to wine? You can do that for spirits, for your friends, because gluten doesn't survive the distillation process. Ah, good to know. So vodka, bourbon, all that, gluten-free, baby. Enjoy it with your cauliflower pizza, little Manhattan. Enjoy a cauliflower pizza every now and then. I do too, actually. Another one that I think is important and oftentimes overlooked is proper service temperature and why, right? The big one, the easiest one to kind of talk about is red wine at room temperature. What is the temperature of your house generally? Like let's say in the winter. 68 degrees. 68 degrees. Okay. Most people do, I'd say a little bit warmer, generally in the 70s. I'm warm blooded, so I'm not a good marker. I run cold, man. I don't know what it is, but my dream is to have the thermos at about 72. That's where I'm just, I'm in my prime, I'm feeling good, juices are flowing, I'm less complainy. Good to know. Exactly. As long as there's a glass of wine in 72 degrees, some food close by, things are good. Room temperature is actually just way too warm for red wine. We're talking those big tannic caps, Barrel, those things like that. You want to chill them down, about actually about 65 to 63 degrees, give or take. The reason is that when wine is too hot, alcohol evaporates far more readily when it's warm. So the warmer it is, you're going to mute those kind of delicate aromatics you're going to get from primary fermentation, the fruit of the wine, the blackberry, the cherry. You're just going to get overcome with alcohol. Yeah, the booze. Too cold, you don't get anything. So you mute all of the flavors and all of the aromas. So that kind of Goldilocks sweet spot temperature is right there rocking about 60, 65 degrees for red wine. For red wine. And for a white wine, I mean, I know people will serve at like a celery temperature or they'll target that out of the fridge temperature, which feels a little too cold to me. About 50 degrees. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you know. Bring it out of the fridge, let it warm up a little bit. Mid October. That's basically what we're after here. Right. So there's kind of a 20-minute rule that a lot of my friends and I like. If your red wine is too hot, put it in the refrigerator in the bottle for 20 minutes, take it out, should be good. And then white wine, if it's too cold or red, for that matter, take it out, let it hang out for a few minutes in the counter, and then things should be good. All right, ladies and gentlemen, so hope that you've learned something today. I really enjoyed this podcast. I really like to talk about this stuff. I don't know if you can tell. I just kind of want to... I had notice. And we can go on. We can do 70 podcasts. Oh, I'm sure we'll do Wine Miss again. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But for this week. We are going to end this podcast with your chance to win a $20 gift card to your favorite Binny's Beverage Depot location. Write to us at Binny's Bev on Twitter. So we've got Marissa Zueck. She asks, What is your recommendation for a good budget bourbon? Oh, I've got two. I mean, that are really, really on that kind of low price scale. I like larceny a lot. Oh, yeah, I really do. I think, you know, about 20, 25 bucks. It's fantastic. And I also like for value, Kelsey Creek. Oh, delicious, super spicy, anxious. I think it's a killer value. So my choices are larceny and Kelsey Creek. But budget to me is different because I'm not in the biz. Budget to everybody is different. So I guess I'm in the, you know, for 750, I'm in the 20s range. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, for another week on Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot, I'm, of course, Jeff Carlin. And as always, Kristen Ellis. Thanks for listening, everybody. Hope that you learned today. I know I sure did, Jeff. I love the myth thing we did this week. Your hair looks fantastic today. Oh, thank you. I know for those of you listening, you can't see it, but I wish they could. I'm sure it does. I've got a little bit of a quaff going. I've been distracted actually this whole time. So thanks for listening, folks. Until next time, take it easy and keep tasting.