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Enhance the flavors by adding water

(The New York Times)
Updated: 2010-08-09 10:09

When fine-tuning the flavor of dishes and drinks, I've always turned to the usual bench of taste and aroma boosters: salt and pepper, lemon juice, herbs and spices, this or that condiment.

One ingredient that never, ever came to mind was water.

Then a few months ago, the London bartender Tony Conigliaro told me that weak cocktails can be more aromatic than stronger drinks.

It's no secret that the alcohol in drinks can get in the way of our enjoying their flavors. Fans and judges of Scotch whiskeys often sample their flavor by "nosing" them, or sniffing the aroma that gathers in the glass. Nosers have long known that diluting the spirit with roughly the same amount of water reduces the alcohol burn. And at the same time, strangely, amplifies the aromas.

How can water reduce one sensation and amplify another? Aroma molecules are more chemically similar to alcohol molecules than they are to water, so they tend to cling to alcohol, and are quicker to evaporate out of a drink when there's less alcohol to cling to.

High-alcohol wines, those that exceed about 14 percent alcohol, are often described as "hot" and unbalanced.

Alcohol's irritating effects account for the heat. And flavor chemists have found that high alcohol levels accentuate a wine's bitterness, reduce its apparent acidity and diminish the release of most aroma molecules. Alcohol particularly holds down fruity and floral aromas.

Adding water to wine is a practice dating back to ancient Greece. It can make a high-alcohol wine fruitier. Tony Cenicola / The New York Times

Wine dilution has been practiced since the days of ancient Greece, so I went ahead and tried it on a California zinfandel with 14.9 percent alcohol.

I poured a partial glass of the wine and added about a quarter of its volume in water, to get it down to 12 percent.

A glass of the full-strength wine tasted hot, dense, jammy and a little sulfurous, while the diluted version was lighter all around but still full of flavor, tarter, more fruity than jammy, and less sulfurous. But the watered-down wine was pleasant.

There's even a place for more water in coffee. I learned this from James Hoffmann, a 2007 winner of the World Barista Championship and proprietor of Square Mile Coffee, a roasting company in London.

He offered me a taste of coffees from Kenya, Ethiopia and Guatemala, all roasted lightly to avoid losing their distinctive qualities.

Each cup was less concentrated than I'm used to making for myself, yet delicious.

Mr. Hoffmann explained that industry standards for brewed coffee strength vary a great deal, from around 1.25 percent extracted coffee solids in the United States to something approaching 2 percent in Brazil and in specialty coffeehouses.

"When I drink coffee I'm looking for clarity, by which I mean distinguishable, characterful, interesting flavors," Mr. Hoffmann said.

The lightness of his brews did seem to highlight their different aromas, which changed but remained enjoyable even as the remains cooled to room temperature. "No other liquid I know evolves as much as you drink it," he said.

So I'm making my coffee with more water now, and getting many more cups from a bag of beans.