WINE VOCABULARY, STEP BY STEP - 5

THIS WILL BE YOUR SECRET MANUAL TO

Affordable styles, self-development, how-to do’s, learn to divine and describe your own taste. Wine is a personal preference; everybody taste different and likes or dislikes some smell or taste impressions.

FOR THE SELF-MADE PERSON

My impression is that a lot of wine critics sound like a doctor. Using wine terms if everybody knows them. To understand this better, I will take you, in the coming time, step by step through those words in a normal way.

By AD Wines, Dannis Apeldoorn

From A to Z —> B

Balance

Balance in a wine, what does that mean. I will explain here also by some examples how you can asses your wine better.

Balance can be thought of as a set of scales, with fruit and sugar on one side, and acidity and tannins on the other.

An increase in fruits or sugar can be brought into balance by an increase in acidity or tannin. With too little fruit or sugar, a wine can be thin or seem angular or austere. With too little acidity or tannin, it can feel tired or seem unstructured and clumsy.

When judging a wine (assessing), you should also consider how well integrated each parts of the wine are (fruit, sugar, acidity and tannin). For example, even if the fruit is balanced by acidity, the acidity could seem aggressive or harsh. This you feel mostly in the back sides of your cheeks and or in the back of your troth. Alcohol should be well integrated, whatever its level. When not well integrated, you can aggressively smell it like a sharp smell in your nose or while tasting the wine a burning and sharp feeling. And so should aromatic components, such as those given from oak. Many times with too young wines the oak smell, and as well by taste, is on-top of the wine. This means you smell first the oak flavours, like wood, vanilla, caramel and smokey tones.

When assessing a wine, ask yourself three questions.

1. How is the overall balance for me?

2. How balances is the wine for me?

3. How well integrated are each of the wine’s components for me?

Judging a wine for your own preference is very personal, so for you can the outcome be different then for me. But assessing the wine as it is, putting your personal preferences aside, the end result will be closer together.

Next week, same day, Saturday, and same time, 9:30 am CET, the next two words.