Wine without burning? An enzyme-modifying startup aims to make spirits smoother

In the world In professional spirits reviews, “smooth” is considered a dirty word. On the other hand, consumers absolutely love using it.

The implication of the word “seamless” is simple; It indicates that the product does not hurt when drunk. It’s a quality so sought after that the distilling industry will do anything to achieve it. Some methods are respectable, such as aging the whiskey for 15 years to get rid of its rough edges. Some are less dangerous, such as dumping large amounts of chemicals Extras. Some are more successful than others, but nothing can completely eliminate the burning sensation in your mouth.

But it wasn’t until Joana Montenegro and Martin Enriquez, the couple’s founders, did it Scientific voodoothat someone actually asked: Why does alcohol burn anyway? More importantly, is there a way to permanently get rid of this breath-inducing burn?

Conventional wisdom and common sense would suggest that ethanol is what makes that ill-advised dose of firewater burn your mouth and throat so badly, but it turns out that’s not the case. During the months of coronavirus lockdown, Enriquez, a former telecommunications executive, says he and Montenegro, originally, had the idea to delve deeper into this question. They started by searching scientific journals to see if anyone had pinpointed why whiskey and its ilk cause annoying burns. No one had. “No one can describe the compounds that cause that harsh, painful sting,” he says. “No one can really pinpoint what is attacking you and causing your pain.”

They decided to dig deeper, said Montenegro, a veteran food scientist from General Mills and Land O’Lakes. “We said, ‘Let’s go back and find the specific future in the mouth that is stimulated by the spirit,'” she says.

To do this, the duo began contacting David Julius, chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, to discuss the course of the investigation. Montenegro, masked and 6 feet apart in a Starbucks, says Julius didn’t understand why someone who was part of the team that patented Go-Gurt would be interested in pain receptors. However, the duo persisted, and Julius eventually instructed them on how to research the concept and determine which receptor was activated to trigger a pain response. Eventually, Montenegro and Enriquez discovered a receptor called TRPA1.

Once you identify a negative receptor like this, conventional food science has a solution to deal with it: you block the receptor with a chemical. It is the typical way in which sweetness and bitterness can be masked in food items, by covering them with something stronger. Unfortunately, that didn’t work to hide the alcohol burn. “This receptor has a very unique property called inverse correlation,” Montenegro says. “It will attach to something, give you a jolt, then let go, and then attach to something else.” This is why alcohol continues to burn sip after sip.

“In other words, you can’t stop it,” she says. “It is designed to constantly alert you that you are consuming something irritating.”