By: Karolina Starczak

Oct 26, 2009

No two flavors clash more than red wine and fish. It’s amazing that the heart healthy combo can produce such a disgusting fishy aftertaste. For years, Wine connoisseurs attributed the taste to a bad mix of the components and ingredients in the two, but the unpleasant flavor may come from an unexpected source—iron. Who would have thought that our oxygen carrying buddy could produce such an offensive flavor?

In order to prove iron’s role in the clash between red wine and fish, a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry recruited laboratory staff members with wine tasting experience to taste 69 wines while eating dried scallops. The panelists rated the fishy aftertaste of each wine using a scale of 0 to 4, with 4 being the strongest fishy aftertaste. Then researchers added extra iron to four wines and an iron binding compound was to six wines, which were then evaluated by the panelists.

Researchers found that the more iron the wine contained, the stronger the fishy aftertaste became, but when the iron binding agent was added to the wine, the fishy aftertaste was suppressed. If iron is the only thing stopping us from having a nice red wine with our herb-crusted salmon, than why not avoid wines with high iron content?  Unfortunately it’s not that easy. The amount of iron wine contains depends on everything from the soil in the vineyard to the amount of dust on the grapes, so for now stick to the white wine and avoid the unpleasant flavor.

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