Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Viscosity Breakdown

Good wine not only tastes good but feels good – in your mouth. (Take it easy with the sexual innuendoes will you.) What I mean, is that often times a good wine will have a rich luxurious texture that you can feel as it rolls around on your tongue. (That is enough you perv, we are trying to have an intelligent discussion about how a juicy wine feels good on your tongue.)


Gylcerol and alcohol are the main drivers of a lush wine's plumb texture. The more of each will equate to more a wine feeling more or less like a silk sheet. A wine with a large amount of viscosity will give you the sensation that you have more wine in your mouth than you initially sipped. When a wine is referred to as “full bodied” it is usually thought to have a good amount of viscosity, aka, glycerol and alcohol, aka plumpness.

Like most things in life, too much viscosity becomes a bad thing quickly. When a wine is so rich and dense that it comes in a squeeze bottle, it might be time to dial back a little bit. Balance is the key here. A wine with good “balance” will have a unit of acidity to balance each unit of viscosity. Without this balance, a wine will tumble from the scales of delicious into the abyss.

Stay balanced my friends,

PS – don't drink motor oil.

No comments: