Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain Stuff Lauren bogelbaumb Here, it takes about two point six pounds that's one point two ms of grapes to produce a standard to seven and fifty million liter bottle of wine, and after the grapes are squeezed, about twenty of that weight remains in the form of grape skins, seeds, and stems.
Pomis or grape mark, as grape waste is called, is something that the global wine industry produces a lot of, close to twelve million tons or eleven million metric tons every year. So what do wineries do with all that gooey stuff. You might think that disposing of vast quantities of it would be a sticky problem, but even though the tasty juice has been squeezed out, the material that's
left behind has a variety of uses. As a two article from Wine Maker Magazine notes, the exact composition of palmis depends upon what sort of wine has been made and at what point the liquid was extracted with white in. For example, the juice is removed prior to fermentation, so the palmice is rich in sugar, nitrogen, and amino acids.
With red wine, in which the grapes are fermented along with the juice before being pressed, there's less sugar left and not as much of the tannins that give wine it's bitter taste, but fermented palmice still contains a whole lot of different components, including cellulose, tartaric acid, trace amounts of other organic acids, sugars, tannins, plant pigments, and some aromatic chemicals. One way to get rid of all of that palmase is to use it to make other types
of alcoholic beverages. Palmis from white wine can be distilled to make grappa, a traditional Italian brandy. Palmas also traditionally has been recycled as fertilizer or animal feed, but scientists are increasingly interested in studying ways of extracting useful components of grape mark for applications such as fuel alcohol production and biofuel energy production, as well as for the production
of biosurficants, which are used in environmental cleanups. Food scientists have also realized that palmase contains a lot of healthy stuff of antioxidants, fiber, and compounds that help moderate blood sugar and create a feeling of fullness, just to name a few. These can be used to make other foods healthier. Palmas has been used as an ingredient in bread, cereal, pasta, cheese, ice cream, and has even been added to meat and seafood. In Northern California wine Country, some wineries use it to
make cookies, flour, and culinary oils. You can even find teas made from wine grape skins if you're looking for a different sort of sip. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other waste free topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com