Profanity in Wine Academia – Fuck et al

March 30th, 20072:41 pm @ Josh Hermsmeyer


So I received the most recent issue of the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture in the mail last night. Flipping through the articles and research notes and speed reading to find the juicy stuff, I usually just skip to the conclusions and only back-read when I find something particularly interesting. Thats exactly what happened last night when one particular paper caught my eye.

Titled Functional Analyses of the Malolactic Wine Yeast ML01, John Husnik (a PhD student at the University of British Columbia) et al test and analyse a new GMO yeast that performs malolactic fermentation at the same time as primary fermentation. Practically speaking ML01 eliminates the annoying problem of stuck MLFs (MILFs!), produces less volitile acidity, and was even shown to increse color extraction in Cabernet. Kind of a triple wammy of coolness for wine geeks.

There’s always a caveat, of course. GMO is a hot button issue and people have strong feelings about it, so I’m not even sure if these advantages are going to promote a widespread adoption of GMO yeasts – especially if wine labeling laws end up changing.

But all of this is really secondary to the killer citation I stumbled upon when reading the intro. Nearly spit out my beer when I saw it.

Ah yes. The estimable E. Fuck, whose seminal research on NAD-dependent malic enzymes are known to man and child. Yeah, not so much. At least not to English speaking academics, since E. Fuck’s paper is available exclusively in German.

Kudos to Husnik for slipping that citation in there, which has to be the culmination of a long held dream to get some ripe profanity into a peer reviewed journal. His friends should all buy him a beer. It ‘s well deserved.

Cheers, John. You’re a rock star.