🍷 Balance (wine)

Balance (also called harmony, or a balanced wine) is when nothing in a wine sticks out. Sweetness and body sit on one side, acidity and phenols such as tannin, astringency and bitterness sit on the other. University sensory courses describe it as a seesaw: the more you notice one side, the less you notice the other.

Penn State Extension lists five basic characteristics of wine: sweetness, acidity, body, tannin and alcohol. Tannin comes from seeds, skins and stems, and the same page credits it with astringency, structure and balance.

Alcohol works on both sides. Ethanol has a sweet edge, slightly boosts the sweetness of sugar and dulls acidity. Above 14 per cent by volume it increasingly burns. And for sweetness to show up at all, a wine generally needs more than about 0.2 per cent sugar.

Serving temperature shifts the seesaw right at your table. Cooling lowers sweetness, raises the sense of acidity and makes tannins more bitter and astringent. Wineries usually pour all their whites at one temperature and all their reds at another, which by this logic is not always the best choice. A red served too cold can taste harsher than it really is.

Balance is not the same as acidity, though acidity is part of it, and it is not the same as the finish, which tasters score separately in wine tasting. Polysaccharides from grapes or yeast also tip things: they add body and soften the impression of acidity and astringency.