Secrets of spit

Few would argue that Eben Sadie is not the most charismatic winemaker in SA. To see him cartwheeling across the floor at the Swartland Revolution last year, the man is clearly on a natural high. He is also a man with a message – at the Revolution it was the primacy of soil in the terroir equation. To make his point, he showed three young vine 2010 Shirazes, all made in the same way, with soil – clay, slate and granite – the only difference. His point made, he will then blend the three distinct terroir wines, add some Mourvèdre, and call the result Columella 2010. For Eben insists that blending is necessary to achieve complexity in South African wines.

Mother Nature obviously agrees, as every wine we drink is a blend. With “a thick, colourless, opalescent fluid that is constantly present in the mouth of humans and other vertebrates” (Encyclopedia Britannica), aka spit, saliva, gob, sputum, dibble, drool, phlegm. Men drink a couple of litres of the stuff a day while women, according to Psychology Today, get by on half that amount. Which could explain why the weaker sex tastes better than men – sisters drink their wine less dilute.

Encyclopedia Britannica reports that saliva is composed of “water, mucus, proteins, mineral salts and amylase”, the last named an enzyme that starts off the process of digestion and also helps swallowing. Spit is an important factor in tasting wine for a variety of reasons: it contains both sodium and potassium chloride that has a buffering effect on flavour and it neutralises excessively acidic wine through dilution and alkaline buffering.

The saliva production difference between the sexes is an important one, as having less saliva makes women more sensitive to sourness, bitterness and astringency, which makes a male assessment of a particularly astringent Pinotage problematic for women and vice versa.

Not only are there sex differences, but spit levels differ between individuals. When fatigued or under stress, we produce less spit, while the pH of our bodies also varies constantly, with higher body acidity coinciding with greater organoleptic sensitivity. To a ‘low flow’ salivator (or even a ‘high flow’ approaching the end of a line-up of 145 Cabernets at a wine tasting), wines will taste more astringent, purely as a result of low volumes of saliva.

The perception of tannins (both grape and oak) is actually one of touch as tannins coagulate proteins in saliva, creating a perception of puckering or a sensation of drying. Saliva is largely responsible for the mouthfeel of a wine. When we say a wine tastes velvety or silky, we are reacting to the long chains of molecules caused by the proteins in the saliva reacting with tannins in the wine. The shape and nature of these stringy bits of spit you can see in any spittoon are responsible for the perception of a wine as furry or grainy, while a chewy or grippy wine is one whose astringency has caused a tactile response in its reaction to saliva.

Saliva is also important in protecting the teeth of wine aficionados as it forms a glycoprotein layer and buffers those enamel-eating acids present in wine – and what a sour line-up they are: tartaric, salic, lactic, malic, acetic… a bit like the juice in a jar of Judy’s Extra Strong Pickled Onions (the best ones). The action of swishing wine liberally around the mouth and then expectorating makes sure that the teeth get maximum exposure to wine acids, so the American Academy of General Dentistry recommends tasting wine through a straw – a dental health tip Georg Riedel is unlikely to support.