7 Popular Wine Myths, Debunked

Perhaps you have a friend in your life who insists on swirling the wine in his or her glass before taking a sip. Or, maybe that's you. Scientifically speaking, does this ritual make any difference? According to Mandy Oser, sommelier and co-owner of New York City's Ardesia wine bar, it sure does. By doing so, Oser says, you are introducing the liquid to oxygen and releasing its flavor compounds into the air.

And this isn't the only "wine snob" move that's backed by science, either. In a recent installment of "Reactions," a video series created by the American Chemical Society and PBS, the team consults a number of wine experts, including Susan Ebeler and Hildegarde Heyman of UC-Davis's Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, to put to bed a host of other long-standing debates around wine.

After watching the full video below, you might reconsider the shape of the glass in which you're drinking your wine (this alters the concentration of the aromas), or what you're eating with it (white wine isn't always the best match for a fish dish). You may also want to resist the temptation to pick up a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's after work (throwing down a few more dollars really does go a long way).