How to describe extreme of several traits (acidity, sweetness, etc.)

Couple observations;

• Acidity - I ouwld not describe the overy acidic end as 'harsh' - harsh is a better descriptor for tannins. For acidity I would use 'sour'
• "Oakiness"? How about simply "Oak"?
• What do you mean by balance? As a winemaker, I look to balance several factors; alcohol, fruit, acid, oak, tannin, etc.
• Some of these seem judgmental ("harsh", perfect") others simply descriptive - what are you trying to accomplish?

Ric

Balance in wine is the result of acidity and sweetness (whites) with reds having the additional tannic component. Fruit and oak are not part of a wine's balance, technically speaking, while alcohol does influence in some measure the perceived sweetness but strictly speaking is not part of balance.

There are reasons why fruit oak and alcohol are not strict components of "balance".

Oak is not because some wines do not exhibit this characteristic and yet appear balanced. Even wines made in oak... ! Some might say that any oak flavour is a form of lack of balance... ;-)

Alcohol is not part of balance because you can have perfectly balanced wines at 7° or at 16°. Witness German wines and Languedoc wines respectively, they hit both extremes of the scale, yet cannot be described as unbalanced.

Fruit is something that is transient, a very mature wine will not exhibit much fruit, yet it can be perfectly balanced.

Whereas with acidity and sweetness, plus tannicity for reds, if any of these components are either too high or too low, the wine will appear unbalanced.

I beg to differ. Most classic styled red wines, and many contemporary white wines, are technically 'dry' (no residual sugar). Ergo, there is no issue of balnace between acidity and sweetness. Any taste of sweetness in those wines is a result of glycerin production during fermentation. As a winemaker myself, I can tell you that there are innumerable articles, discussion groups, and class components on the concept of 'balance' - as being much broader than 'sweet vs acid'.

A wine that has too much alcohol, relative to other components of the wine, is considered unbalanced. Likewise, a wine that has too much fruit profile, relative to other components of the wine, is unbalanced.

Beg to disagree. Balance between sweetness and acidity is only one dimension in wine - and applicable only to wines that have residual sweetness. Balance between tannins and acidity is also only one dimension. There are numeous other dimensions of balance - wood, tannins, fruit, etc. You might want to take a wine tasting class, many of which spend a lot of time on this very topc. You could also Google up "wine balance" and see numerous articles and discussions on same.

Alcohol - fruit - oak - acidity - tannins - sweetness ---- all are factors in assessing balance. Which is why I was curious as to the intent of the OP; trying to assess balance on a binary scale is difficult at best.

Take it easy and don't be patronizing.

"take it easy'? Et tu brute. lol - no offense intended.

I was not disagreeing with your suggestion that balance involves acidity - sweetness; my point was that this is only one dimension of balance -- and that there are many, many resources to give folks some knowledge of balance beyond the dimensions you mentioned.

I am trying to polish an evaluation scorecard I have developed.

Instead of a system that uses a number, I want to have visual scales that span the range of each characteristic or trait mentioned in the original post (sweetness, acidity, etc.)

Something like this:

ACIDITY low |----|----|----|----|----|----|----| high TANNINS soft |----|----|----|----|----|----|----| harsh SWEETNESS dry |----|----|----|----|----|----|----| sweet

So the taster puts an X in the range for each trait, thus conveying his/her assessment.

Thus, I am look>Couple observations;

-- ===============================Check out the MiamiWine blog.

OK

Correct, one can speak of balance of taste and balance of flavours or aromas, and of course of the overall balance between taste and aroma.

I will post something later on this. The thing that irked me, Ric, to be honest, is the idea of playing with oakiness. Let's leave out the case of a winemaker deliberately going for an "oaky" wine by using new overtoasted wood, this is obviously not of interest here as we are talking about good wine not flavoured drinks ;-)

Oak in a serious good wine to me is not something that you play with, not something that you try to increase or decrease, it is more of a consequence of the vinification methods used. In a good wine it remains a discrete reminder of how the wine was made and aged, and there is a threshold, a low threshold beyond which the wine goes completely out of balance.

Fruitiness will obviously be affected by tannicity, so I do concede to you that yes there is definitely a tradeoff here and the winemaker needs to decide whether he wants a tannic austere wine with not much fruit, or a fruit bomb with very soft tannin, or something more... balanced.

My point was that in general one thinks of balance as balance of taste, therefore limited to the components sweetness (from sugar and/or alcohol), tannicity (astringency) and acidity. No doubt that other types of balance come into play in a good wine, but the main idea in wine tasting (not necessarily in wine making) is the balance of taste.

Cheers... what kind of wine do you make?

Actually a whole set of terms exists more or less officially describing the entire spectrum both for whites (in which case no tannin,

I will post an article on this later, with illustrations of the famous triangle.

My short answer is that it is almost impossible to describe a (red) wine by isolating the 3 components.

One could attempt to fill in the blanks in your diagram. Such as:

ACIDITY flat | thin | fresh | lively | green | acid TANNINS spineless | easy | round | tannic | rough | harsh SWEETNESS dry | supple | soft | rich | sweetish | sweet

A number score on the 3 compnents would be better, and I would reserve the words for an overall description of the result of the 3 components. I'm working on it... ;-)

No terms should be used to describe both ends of the spectra of several common traits, for example, acidity, sweetness, etc.

You should just drink the wine and enjoy it, and then shut the hell up.

If you sat at my dinner table and talked like this, you would not be invited back.

Your statement would make most of us instantly start talking like that ;-)

Ha ha ha. I'm doing a dinner party next weekend. Roman (Lazio) and Sicilian dishes.

On tap:

Taurasi Riserva (Mastroberardino, 1997) Avulisi Roca Rubia Patrigilone Notarpanaro S'elegas Costamolino Janko Cubìa Costera Perdera Fourplay Velletri Primitivo (Carparelli)

and a bottle or two of various others, such as Aglianico from Puglia, etc.

Menu:

Prosciutto & figs Bruschetta bread & closed pizza San Giuseppe Soup Eggplant sandwiches Polenta w / baby back ribs & sausage Stuffed peppers (with provelone & sardines) Rissoto Fish (Sicilian recipe yet to be finalized)

From our vineyard, Marsanne and Syrah - with some young Cabernet Sauvignon vines that won;t harvest for a couple more years. We buy grapes from a few other places; this year, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, and Zinfandel. In the past, Cab Franc, Merlot, a few others.

Ineresting table at this link relating to differeing balance attributes;

What these binary relationships miss tho, IMHO, is the concept of overall balance; acididty - alcohol - fruit - wood - tannin. I believe (again, just MHO), that what often distinguishes a great wine is not just the absolute of any of those values (which is critical) but also the harmony - balance - amongst all of them. What is 'balanced' oak in one wine, is possibly out of balance in another. etc. Many, many winemaking discussions and classes focus on just this - trying to achieve balance amongst the different attributes, within the confines of varietal and desired style.

I like what you're suggesting here - to use commonly accepted descriptor language on this scale, which may then result in a numerical value or not, but by using these descriptors you can elicit a more specific characterization of the wine form the taster (especially the less experienced taster) and then translate that into a scale.

What about some of the other attributes the OP suggested?

I still tend think that, while valuable, this kind of tasting chart will force the taster to miss the concepts of style and overall balance. Meaning, those are multi-dimensional and can't be put into a binary scale like that. But that's not to say this doesn't have value - it does.

The import of your many postings suggests that your point of view is - "wines are great if I say so, all others suck, and there is no room for critical evaluation that might end up disagreeing with me".

What the hell does "critical evaluation" have to do with enjoying wine with food? The best recommendation I can give a wine is to serve it, and to buy it again.

What if you didn't enjoy it? It would be nice to note why, for next time.

Jose

I don't make notes. I vote with my wallet. If a wine is good, I tell my friends. If not, it stays on the shelf, or some sucker may buy it.