Read What Einstein Kept Under His Hat: Secrets of Science in the Kitchen for Free Online

from burning sulfur) have been added to wines for thousands of years to protect them against oxidation and discoloration. Moreover, sulfites can kill harmful bacteria and wild yeast cells in the grape pressings so that the “tame” fermenting organisms can get a biologically clean start. Without the preservative effect of added sulfites, wines would not be drinkable after one or two years, which may be little problem for a wine that is best drunk young, such as a Beaujolais, but would be a tragedy for a slow-aging Bordeaux.
    About one person in a hundred is sensitive to sulfites, which can even bring on an asthma attack in asthmatics. Sensitive individuals should avoid foods that contain any of the following: sulfur dioxide, potassium bisulfite, potassium metabisulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium metabisulfite, and sodium sulfite. Note that, except for sulfur dioxide itself, the tip-off is the suffix -ite in the chemical name.
    As with all ingested substances, it’s not a simple matter of good and bad. Any chemical is inherently neither “safe” nor “dangerous.” It’s all a matter of amount. The legal limit of sulfites in wine in the United States is 350 parts per million (ppm), although most wines with added sulfites contain only 25 to 150 ppm. According to federal law, if a wine contains 10 ppm or more of sulfites, the label must state that it “contains sulfites.”
    With your wine storekeeper’s assistance, look for an FDA-approved “No sulfites added” notice on the labels of some bottles. Your husband can then try them and see if the small amount of natural sulfite is enough to give him a reaction.
    And by the way, anyone who says that something “smells like sulfur” probably never took a chemistry course. The solid element sulfur, known biblically as brimstone, is perfectly odorless, but many of its compounds are evil-smelling. Sulfur dioxide is the smell of burning sulfur.
                        
VEDDY, VEDDY SHERRY
                        
    What’s so special about Sherry that makes it a separate category of wine? Is it the grape, the region, the method of production?
    ....
    I t’s all three, but primarily the method of production.
    There are some five thousand varieties of wine grapes that could be used in almost one hundred appellations d’origine in France alone, plus seventy-four appellations in California, not to mention Australia, Chile, and dozens of other wine-producing countries. Multiplied by perhaps ten years of vintages, that amounts to over 37 million possible bottles of decent wine—plus untold bottles of plonk. I often wonder how anyone can select the best wine to match a dinner course when faced with such a staggering range of choices lying in a make-believe cellar the size of Antartica.
    But I do know something about Sherry, having visited the one place in the world where it is produced: in and around the town of Jerez de la Frontera, a couple of hours’ drive south of Seville in Spain’s province of Cádiz. There, I was figuratively and almost literally immersed in Sherry as I toured the headquarters of Williams & Humbert, producers of Dry Sack, Pando, Canasta Cream, and many other Sherries and brandies.
    Why the non-Spanish names Williams and Humbert, you may ask? And whence the English word Sherry ? Several of the Sherry companies in Jerez were founded in the nineteenth century by British entrepreneurs for the purpose of exporting Sherry to England, where the dry Sherries have always been favored as apéritifs and the sweet ones as dessert wines. The word Sherry came into English from the name Jerez (HER-eth), but throughout the Spanish-speaking world Sherry is still known as vino de Jerez .
    So what’s so special about Sherry?
    The identity of Sherry is tightly controlled by a regulatory council. To earn the Denomination of Origin “Jerez-Xérès-Sherry,” the grapes must be Palomino, or less commonly Pedro Ximénez or