Oishinbo - Vol. 4 Ch. 30 - The Qualities of Liquors

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This was also one of the chapters that was in Ala Carte. I still get surprised sometimes about how old/early some of the chapters included in Ala Carte was. I knew that it's a mixed selection, but still.

I also commented this in the previous version, but really, I can't stop thinking of this since I saw the Ala Carte one: I don't know about wine, but based on what I read in Drops of God/Kami no Shizuku, I was thinking Yamaoka probably had the wrong kind of chablis, that's why he ended up with a weird taste.

(Context: "Drops of God" is a wine connoisseur manga, where one of the storylines is precisely "finding the right chablis to go with oysters". The conclusion in the series was that not all chablis can be paired with oysters, and if you pick a wrong type it won't pair well and you'd get that funny fishy taste. I don't know how correct the claims being made in this series were, but hey.)
 
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Yamaoka (by extension Kariya) seemingly bases a lot of his knowledge on personal experience, or interviewing other people. This was back when the Internet was in its infancy, and online research was considered unreliable.

I wouldn't be surprised if his knowledge turned out to be less than accurate. We've already seen his misunderstanding on what searing does to steak. A relatively minor error, though he will depict more egregious errors in later chapters. This is another reason why I include my Gourmet Notes, to correct or at least make known when something in the chapter is misleading.

On the subject of chablis with oysters specifically, I was unable to find any scientific studies that corroborated the effect of wine's organic acids on seafood, which leads me to believe the taste thing is anecdotal, and Kariya (or his source) looked up what chemicals are present in wine that aren't in sake and attributed it to them without rigorous testing.
 

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