[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

It’s one of the most vexing problems in modern science: which wine to order with the Chilean sea bass. One thing’s for sure, though—you’d only ever order a white wine, never a red wine with fish. The flavors just clash. But now researchers have pinpointed the problem with red wine and seafood. And some reds may actually go fine with fish.

Japanese scientists asked study subjects to try 38 red wines and 26 whites while eating scallops. Some of the wines contained small amounts of iron, which varied by country of origin, variety and vintage. The tasters noted which wines really didn’t work with scallops. And the researchers found that those wines all had high levels of iron. So they doctored the wine with a substance that binds iron, keeping it away from the tasters’ tongues. And voila, the bad taste became a bad memory. The study appears in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

With that knowledge in hand, wine lovers should be able to find reds that taste terrific with tilapia. So look for red wines with low iron. Just for the halibut.

—Steve Mirsky