Recently I tasted a 2011 Alesia Sonoma Coast blind. I thought it was a great wine with good flavor, but I was surprised by the watery texture. It was as though the tannin did not exist. I knew better (once revealed), so I cellared it for a day and of course it blossomed and had beautiful texture and tannin the next day. What is the mechanism working here? How can tannin be so elusive at one moment and then become prominent another? I’m more familiar with the opposite, aggressive tannins that mellow. Any insights here?
It is a mystery. The combination of ‘fine grained’ tannins and enough acidity seems to be a key tho.
Were you drinking it with food?
Proteins combine with tannins, so they are less prominent if you’re drinking a wine with meat or other proteins. Conversely, tannins can combine with the proteins in saliva and make your mouth feel dry and chalky. That happens more with high tannin wines, or when drinking a lot of wine without food.
Another possible explanation: With a young wine, the fruit is often very prominent when the wine is first uncorked and poured. When it subsides a bit, the structure can become more apparent.
It was you, not the wine.
Well that figures. But that is good info, only varietal I’ve run into this is Pinot. The acidity/tannin thing makes sense.
I’m a wine/food guy, I get this. My palate was clean. I’ve had this happen with pinot before, it’s not a structure issue, it’s a texture thing.
Without doubt. I had clearly not prepped the palate sufficiently. Does anybody else have a piece of charcuterie, an olive, and dark chocolate, simply to prep the palate? That’s my cab/syrah prep.
What’s the difference? You were asking why tannin could be elusive. That sounds like an issue of how the structure is perceived.
Yeah, I was thinking about that afterward, you’re right, they are essentially the same issue. Just in this case it wasn’t prominent fruit.
With some young wines aeration can actually make the wine close down harder. This may have been that sort of behavior, though with a gentle start…?