This Wine Chemistry Video Explains What Connoisseurs Rant About

This video will let you hold a conversation with the wine snob at your next office party.

"No matter how much you paid for it, a bottle of wine is about 98 percent water and ethanol. It's the remaining couple of percent that make wine taste like wine" says this YouTube by Reactions, a series by the American Chemical Society.

When connoisseurs' use adjectives like "grassy", "chocolatey", and "tannic", they're really talking about chemical compounds in the wine. And those compounds come from three things: grapes, soil, and climate.

Each wine has a distinct chemical fingerprint because there are more than 10,000 wine grape varieties and countless minerals in soils where those grapes are grown.

Climate matters because warm temperatures make more alcoholic, robust wines than do cold. So two bottles made from the same grapes in the same locations can be completely different.

The wood that wine barrels are made of can even change wines chemistry.

So watch here for conversation material you can use while you schmooze.