Wine Examiner Flavor Component: Acidity

Pretty much what you think.  The tartness that curls your tongue like vinegar does, or green apples, or any sour candy from our childhood.

In wine, acidity is part of the overall sense of balance, too much acidity and the whole mess comes off tart and makes all your food taste like a green salad with vinaigrette.  Too little and the sugars, the fruits, the bubble-gum flavors take over and make the wine one dimensional, flabby, and the wine will not age well.

Cooler climate wines tend to have higher acidity, giving you crisper wines with flavors of minerality, delicate florals, tart fruits like apples, citrus and the like, whereas wines from warmer growing regions will give you rounder, lower pH wines that will lean towards buttery, nutty, with lush and sweet tropical fruit flavors.

Your tongue, which is divided into several regions, picks up the acidity, or the sourness of wine on the edges about midway back, whereas it picks up sweetness right on the tip.  So when your tongue “curls” as it were on the edges, this is the taste buds picking up the acidity.

Understand that like sugars, tannins, and other components, acidity is not a bad thing in and of itself.  But when used in conjunction, it balances the whole wine out.  Think in terms of that salad, if you just had greens with olive oil, it’d be pretty gross, all thick and cloying.  But with the vinegar added, there is a balance, two opposites working together to make the dish appealing on a sensory level.

The same holds true for wine.