Acid

If you have ever sucked on a lemon, you’ll be aware of the puckering feeling or taste on your tongue, but did you stop to notice what happens next? You might notice a wash of saliva fill your mouth. This is the same effect acid in wine has on your mouth.  Acid in wine provides structure and freshness, keeping a wine feeling fresh in your mouth.

A common misconception is that red wines do not have acid as it doesn’t have that same lemon/citrus taste that we find in a white wine. Acid is still particularly important to red wines and balances the other factors (below) of a wine including fruit ripeness, tannin and oak flavours.

Tannin

A natural compound found in grape skins, seeds and stems which, the longer the grape juice is soaked in the vat with these elements the more tannic the wine will become. Tannin provides a drying, grippy or gritty sensation in the mouth, generally around the gumline.

Tannin is closely related to colour as they are both extracted from the skins so by looking at the colour you can get a small hint as to how tannic that wine might be. The difference between a good wine and a bad wine is how integrated or round those tannins are.

Tea leaves are also high in tannin and like wine, the darker the tea the more tannin has been extracted/ brewed out of the tea leaves. A strong black tea will become bitter and produce a very strong drying grippy feeling on the gums. Go on, try it!

A young wine will have very apparent and strong flavour (or feeling) of tannin and over time oxygen will help break those tannins down to become softer and rounder. Just because a wine is tannic when it is young does not mean it is a bad wine, just that its young and has some developing to do. Wines with high tannin should age well if it has other components to keep it in balance such as enough fruit and good acid to keep its structure intact.

Body

I liken body in wine to body in dairy products. Body is a way to talk about the density in wine, or the palate weight that you feel when you drink a wine. Take water for example, it is light and crisp, it doesn’t really coat the mouth and it doesn’t linger afterwards.

If you compare that to full cream milk, the feeling in the mouth is heavy and it coats your tongue and gums. In contrast full cream milk has more ‘body’ that low fat milk which tastes and feels more watery. Finally, you get to cream, it’s very full bodied, it’s rich, it’s dense and it’s heavy in the mouth. This is on the extreme side of trying to describe body in wine but some sweet wines such as Late Harvest or Spanish Sherry (the sweet ones) can be very viscous and full bodied.

Fruit

The ultimate wine is one that expresses the vineyard it comes from and stays true to its namesake. Each grape has its on aromas and characteristics which is the first element you might notice in a wine. For example, typically a Shiraz has aromas of plum, blackberry, sultanas (when ripe) and peppercorn and a (dry) Riesling might be limes, green apple, lemon and pineapple. These are fruit flavours or primary aromas/flavours coming from the grape as opposed to secondary aromas/flavours that come from the use of winemaking techniques such as oak use (see below). It’s especially important to keep the wine in balance with enough fruit to balance out the other wine elements such as acidity, strong tannins and oak flavour.

Oak

Wine is stored in oak barrels for a couple of reasons. The primary reason is due to the oak wood being a porous material, that means it is not watertight or airtight and tiny amounts of oxygen are able to pass through the oak. This micro-oxygenation works on the tannins to soften and round them out leaving the wine taste less grippy and ‘smoother’.

The second reason is for aromatics and taste (oak flavour). Different types of oak provide different types of aromas and elements of flavour. However, too much oak, particularly brand-new oak can result in a wine tasting bitter, drying and sappy. Generally, French oak adds aromas of cedar, fresh offering more silky tannins and American oak provides sweeter flavours like vanilla, coconut, cinnamon or chocolate. Oak can also overpower the delicate nature of fruit components which is why winemakers tend to use a mixture of new oak and used oak. The newer the oak the more powerful the oak flavour and the less time you use the barrel the less flavour is passed onto the wine.

Interesting side note, in today’s modern winemaking world you don’t need to rely on barrels to provide oak taste anymore. Winemakers can experiment with oak staves (oak planks cut to size to fit in a tank or a ‘used’ barrel) or even oak chips (used in a mesh bag to infuse into a tank similar to a tea bag).