Wine 101: Components of Wine

There are several different chemical components of a wine, and though they might not seem overly important on first glance, each of these forms an integral part of wine.  As such, it is important to be able to recognize them so that they might be properly analyzed and described.

Acidity

This is arguably the most important characteristic of a wine, especially when you are pairing wine with food. Acidity is literally the acid content of the wine. You can feel it right when you swallow a mouthful – it causes a rush of saliva towards the front of your mouth that would make you drool if you left your mouth open. (Which has been known to happen, on occasion.) If you aren’t quite sure of this sensation, envision biting into something really sour, like a lemon – that puckery sensation and rush of spit is the same thing caused by acid in wine.

On a side note, wine mostly has malic acid – the tart acid present in apples. However, sometimes wines can go through a secondary fermentation that converts the malic acid into lactic acid – the acid present in milk. In winemaking this is referred to as malolactic fermentation, and as you might expect, it gives a wine a creamy, buttery, milky mouthfeel. Chardonnay, especially in California, is commonly subjected to malolactic fermentation, and that buttery mouthfeel is a signature marker of California Chard.

It’s important to note that you can’t smell or taste acidity – it doesn’t have a flavour. Rather, it is a tactile sensation. A wine might smell a certain way to make you think it smells acidity (such as having aromas of lemons or vinegar) but you aren’t actually smelling the acid; you’re smelling something that is acidic, which can make you conflate the feeling of eating that substance with its smell. So tread carefully with the descriptors you toss about, and never say “Ooh, this wine smells really acidic.” Because it doesn’t. It is not physically possible.

Generally speaking, the more acidity in the wine, the dryer it is – although in some really crazy (and friggin’ delicious) wines, acidity exists alongside sweetness; I’ll discuss this more in the section on sugar.

Tannin

Most of the time, tannin is only present in red or pink wines – tannins come from grape skins and seeds, and since white wines are pressed and the juice runs free, never touching the skins for very long (or at all), white wine doesn’t have tannins. (Well, it doesn’t have grape tannins – tannin can actually come from oak too, so if white wine is aged in new oak, it might have some tannin feel to it, though usually this is very slight.)

Like acidity, tannins are a tactile sensation, not an aroma or flavour. Again, you might conflate the smell of something tannic with the sensation of eating it, but you are never, ever actually smelling tannins themselves. Tannins are essentially the “dryness” of the wine. They suck all the moisture out of your tongue and cheeks and leave your mouth feeling raspy and dry. Envision drinking really dark, over-steeped black tea, and you’ll get an impression of tannins – that drying feeling that black tea gives you is the same as the sensation conveyed by tannic wine. (Because tea has tannins, too.)

Very full-bodied, young red wines typically have the most tannin. Certain grape varieties also tend to be higher in tannin than others: Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo are typically quite high in tannin, while Gamay and Pinot Noir tend to be quite low in tannin.

Because wines with extremely high tannin content are usually not so enjoyable to drink (unless you are alternating big gulps of water and tooth-brushing in between sips), you should take some steps to reduce this quality if you happen to crack open such a wine. Decanting the wine (pouring it into another container, preferably one with a wide, flat bottom) for a few hours is probably the best way to “open up” a tannic wine. You’ll probably also want to pair the decanting with vigorous glass swirling.

Eating food (especially red meat) with a tannic wine will also help alleviate some of the drying effect. Be liberal with the salt, as salt reduces the impression of tannin on your palate. I’m not really certain of the science behind this, but I’m very certain that it does work – if you don’t believe me, try dabbing some salt on your tongue and then sipping a very tannic wine. It’s like magic!

Alcohol

Just like acid and tannin, you cannot really “smell” alcohol. Rather, alcohol is perceived as heat – booze that’s high in alcohol will quite literally burn your nostrils. (And anyone who has let their nose remain stationary over a glass of cask-strength scotch for too long can verify this.)

Similarly, when you taste a wine that’s high in alcohol, it will leave your mouth feeling hot and burn-y. Appropriately, the term “hot” is used to describe a wine with high alcohol content – but only when the alcohol is out of balance with the rest of the wine’s components. Quite unlike applying this term to humans, describing a wine as “hot” is usually pejorative; it means something is out of sync. It is quite possible for a wine to be high in alcohol and perfectly pleasant, so long as the other components balance the heat.

Hot wines tend to come, appropriately, from hot climates (California, Australia, southern France, southern Italy). In these regions, grapes ripen extremely well and have correspondingly high levels of sugar. Since sugar is the driving force behind fermentation (yeast consumes sugar and alcohol is created as a by-product), grapes with high sugar content will ferment into wine with high alcohol content.

Alcohol is also sweet, so a wine with a higher alcohol content will often give the impression of sweetness on the palate; it also makes a wine feel like it has a fuller body, something that you’ll again experience on the palate.

Sugar

All wine has residual sugar in it, though in dry table wine this is in such a small amount that it doesn’t make the wine seem sweet to your palate – or at least, not the same degree of sweetness in milk chocolate or Coca-Cola. I don’t think I need to describe what sugar tastes like, since out of all the components in a wine, it is probably the most familiar to people.

In wine, it is important for sweetness to be counterbalanced by acidity – otherwise the wine will be cloyingly sweet and leave your mouth feeling unpleasantly fuzzy. (Remember that feeling you got as a child after eating way too many Skittles? That’s what unbalanced sweet wine is like, à la White Zinfandel and Blue Nun. Blech.)

Though sweet wines used to be highly favoured by the North American palate, in the last few decades the trend has swung in the complete opposite direction, and now the majority of people prefer wines that are quite dry. Similarly, I’ve often noticed that many people equate sweet wines with low quality, when this isn’t necessarily the case at all – some of the world’s best wines are sweet. (If you don’t believe me, you need to try some 2001 Sauternes or 30-year-old vintage port or aged German Riesling.)

This stereotype does make sense, however, especially in North America – the first wines produced by American and Canadian winemakers were invariably sweet, high-alcohol concoctions. Furthermore, sweet wines aren’t nearly as popular as dry table wines, so many people simply haven’t tried any good ones. It’s easy to fear the unknown.  Still, it’s absolutely worth it to seek out sweeter wines, as many pleasant surprises await you.

Wine, Wine 101