John Elliott provides a background to queries on this topic received from several members.
Significant media attention was drawn to the recent Royal Australian Chemical Institute's 10th National Convention in Adelaide last October.
The excitement was about the "accelerated aging" of wine.
When wine is cellared, the glycosides change by hydrolysis to volatile flavour compounds, and the rate of change can be accelerated by heating. Glycosides are non-volatile substances containing glucose. They are important flavour precursors in wine and grape juice, and can be measured by chemical analysis. Their measurement also gives an indication as to the amount of flavour in the wine, and therefore considerable work has been done by The Australian Wine Research Institute in identifying and qualifying their importance in wine.
