Balance: What is it in wine?

A frequently asked question by wine lovers and normal consumers, who are not necessarily wine experts or professionals is how to determine the quality of a wine, regardless of price and without the normal jargon of professional tasters and reviewers. Fair enough. Not everyone has taste buds that determine the different flavours, aromas and taste of particular fruits in a wine. What most consumers are concerned with, is the actual final taste or palate. But as in everything else tastes are subjective and differ from one person to the next. In any case, to determine if your favourite wine, produced from a particular grape variety is good or not compared to another wine made from the same varietal and possibly a different country, here are some basic hints which apply to all wines:

There are four characteristics which one should consider to assess a wine, which when taken together will bring us to the fifth and most important characteristic, viz: BALANCE.

TANNIN: The content of this substance comes from the grape skins, stems, pips and even oak barrels used for aging many wines. It is a natural preservative permitting wine improvement in the bottle. Tannin is not actually a taste but a tactile mouth sensation. The drier your mouth feels after you sip a wine, the more tannin that wine would have.

ACIDITY: All wine has a certain amount of acidity. White wines usually have more acidity than reds. If you are unsure what acidity is, smell and then taste fresh lemon juice or vinegar. If the acidity is too high, the wine is unbalanced, sour and even harsh in the mouth, but on the other hand if the acidity is too low, the wine will taste flat and insipid.

ALCOHOL: Alcohol is the wine product achieved during fermentation of the grape sugar. In Europe fermented grapes juice should reach at least 8.5% alcohol before it legally constitutes wine. The technical European legal maximum alcoholic strenght for wines that have had no alcohol (or sugar) added , is 15%.

BODY: The body or mouth-feel of a wine is an assessment of how light or heavy the wine feels in the mouth. It is related to alcohol levels. Wines that contain more alcohol (e.g. 13% plus by volume) would feel heavier in the mouth. If the body is light think of water; if it is medium think of milk; if it is full think of cream. In some cases full-bodied, premium wines leave a trace , which are sometimes referred to as fingers, inside the glass.

BALANCE: As I said before, Acidity is vital to the balance of a wine's flavour and structure, unless detrimentally affected by residual sugars in the bottle. A balanced wine is one in which none of its components dominates. That is, where tannins, acidity and alcohol, residual sugars and fruit balance each other out to give a smooth and lingering finish to the palate.