It’s a decent little Sushi joint; still, we have to wedge a coaster under one leg to keep the table from going ka-chunk when we lean on it. My friend Richard orders iced green tea. He takes a sip, then says to the waitress, “This probably isn’t right, but could you bring me some sweetener?”
But that’s exactly right! The tea is high in tannin and acid – he knows instinctively that sugar would complete the balance. In wine, “balance” sounds like an esoteric concept like Feng Shui or Sinn Fein (whatever - I can’t pronounce or fathom either one), the sort of thing that only people with more finely tuned sensibilities than yours can appreciate. Actually, it’s as simple and instinctive as mixing iced tea.
Or wedging a wobbly table, except instead of legs to even up you’ve got components. Of these, oak, tannin, sugar and alcohol get lots of attention. But just as important, toiling away in the background like so many munchkins on meth, are the acids.
If tannin is wine’s backbone, acid is its nervous system. If tannin frames the house, acid wires it for electricity. If tannin plays bass, acid is the string section. If wishes were horses, genies would arrange trifectas.
You’re familiar with acid if you ever noticed how the walls seem to breath in and out and the leaves on the wallpaper turn into insects crawling up your…oh, wait, wrong acid. Here we go; the main acids in wine are as follows:
Tartaric adds body and tartness. Eventually, it forms crystals that drop out of the liquid; you’ve probably seen them at the bottom of a bottle or stuck to the cork. They won’t hurt you, any more than that white stuff in the jar that’s been on your spice rack for ten years: cream of tartar. It used to come from scraping the inside of wine barrels. I still have no idea what it’s for. Maybe the people who sell sets of spices needed something to even up the row: “Make it white, Roger. It’ll set off the chervil.”
Malic tastes like green apples. Too much tastes as sharp as old Granny Smith’s tongue, so many whites and virtually all reds undergo malolactic fermentation, which transforms it into much mellower lactic acid, the kind in milk and cream. Lactic is the buttered-popcorn you find wedged in the overstuffed cushions of (some) American chardonnay.
Citric acid is the lemon-lime-grapefruit squirt that livens up certain whites and rosés. Not much of it occurs naturally in grapes, so sometimes they add it for zing.
Succinic is the best acid you never heard of with a salty-sour-bitter flavor that’s common to everything fermented.
Those are the good guys, the fixed acids. Then there’s acetic acid, called “volatile” because it boils away at a low temperature. A smidgeon brings out aromas and flavors, but beyond that you get nose-wrinkling odors of vinegar and nail polish remover.
Acid affects how other components taste. Enough lemons turn sugar water into lemonade. Champagne and young German rieslings are surprisingly crammed with sugar, but high acid makes them seem dry.
Ever complained about a wine that ate the rust right off your bumper, only to be told “But it’s a food wine!” Well, yeah, it’s an excuse, but often they’re right. Low-acid sipping wines, voluptuous and soft, smooth and sweet, are solo players. The ensemble work of dinner is a job for the high-acid wine. Acid makes you salivate. It freshens your palate between bites, making food taste better and go down easier. Higher-acid wines taste cleaner, more refreshing, sharper, fruitier and drier.
Along with tannin and sugar, acid is a preservative; a crucial ingredient in any wine destined for aging. Some grape varieties naturally have more than others. Riesling and barbera ring in high, while viognier, marsanne and gewürztraminer score low. Whites mostly have more than reds and dessert wines have the most of all.
Young grapes in cool climates have the most acid. As grapes ripen, acid levels go down. Warm climates can produce lively acid if the nights are cool, like, for instance, in Napa. However, in a region like Tuscany, where sweat never sleeps, jangling acids just aren’t going to happen. They don’t care – they can take their International-style, soft-tannin, low-acid reds to the bank.
Which kind you prefer is more than just a question of situation and taste, your stomach lining has a say as well. Some people are acutely sensitive to the burn of acid while others notice nothing as it goes down. But it’s not about picking one style. It’s about knowing, if your wine is going ka-chunk, which leg to saw off.
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