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  • [Music: 12 Days of Christmas]

  • This video is being released on Christmas Day.

  • We haven't made a Christmas video for a long time...

  • ...so we're going to make up for it by lots of Christmas videos.

  • What I want to show you are some of the presents that I've been sent...

  • ... by you YouTube viewers, and I've collected on my travels around the UK, around the world.

  • And they've all got something really quite interesting and chemical about them...

  • ...and some of them have got really nice stories.

  • So let's begin with this one.

  • This looks like a sort of biscuit that you might get in a café - health food.

  • But it's actually solid and quite heavy. It was given to me in one piece but it broke in my luggage.

  • And it is the deposit that is formed inside an enormous wine barrel.

  • I visited a vineyard where they make wine, which belongs to the president of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, so he can really entertain in style.

  • And we sat among these huge barrels - big enough for somebody to get inside.

  • On each table there were lumps of this material.

  • So I must say in this case I had to ask for some, rather than being given it as a complete gift, but I told him I thought it would make an interesting YouTube video.

  • Now, I haven't tested this myself.

  • He told me that it was tartaric acid, though it might be a tartrate.

  • Tartaric acid is an interesting molecule because it was one of the first that was discovered to demonstrate left-handed and right-handed forms.

  • But I don't know whether the people who discovered it, discovered it in wine or somewhere else.

  • But I was amazed that you should have things like this inside a wine barrel.

  • And if you look, it's really quite thick.

  • So it's not just some tiny deposit.

  • [Brady]: Is this like... this is a bad thing? This ruins the wine? Is this like a waste product? Or...

  • [Professor]: I think that tartaric acid is a waste product, but a small amount of it stays in the wine and gives part of the flavour.

  • The flavours of wine are made up from a whole series of different compounds.

  • So you need just a pinch of this, a bit of that, and so on.

  • So if there was no tartaric acid at all, it wouldn't taste the same.

  • [Brady]: Was your host surprised when you asked to keep it?

  • [Professor]: I'm not sure. I'll have to ask him when I see him next.

  • He's a space scientist, astrophysicist. So I think deposits in wine barrels are not his area of science.

  • So, this is my present for the first day of Christmas.

  • And there are lots more to come for all twelve days of Christmas.

  • And some days have more than one present.

  • [laughter]

  • Oh my God!

  • I think it's absolutely disgusting! [laughs]

  • Eww! [laughs]

  • Ugh!

[Music: 12 Days of Christmas]

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