Go Ahead And Toss Your Wine Into A Blender

Well OK, there's a lot more about food and science in the following video, where Nathan Myhrvold, mad scientist behind Modernist Cuisine, chats a little about bringing science into the kitchen. He talks about how to make your barbecue better (create a three-mirror structure with aluminum foil to bounce off heat), how cooking actually works, the different stages of water, and how popcorn pops. It's all pretty great.

The best part, however, is the easiest way to decant and aerate your wine, letting it breathe. Sommeliers talk so much about decanting your wine to oxidize the wine and change the flavor, but a decanter might just be too much work for you.

So take Myhrvold's idea: Pour some red wine into a blender, cover, and blend. "It somehow lacks the reverence," Myhrvold says. "So you do this and it turns out there are a couple reasons why: first of all, it dramatically improves the flavor particularly of younger red wines, it's much faster than other means, but the real reason to do it? The looks on people's faces. I tell you, you do this with a wine expert in the room? And it's very funny to me because it's like you've committed a deeply unnatural act. But hey, it's food. Why is it OK for daquiris and not for bordeaux?" It works, and that's all that matters to us. Watch the full session for the American Association for the Advancement of Science below; wine talk starts 42 minutes in.