ACIDITY - what´s the matter ...

To me it seems to be the preference here: the higher the acidity (and the lower the alcohol) the better the wine - red and white.

???

Every grape starts green with enormous acidity and zero sugar and no fruit - as maturity progresses sugar rises and acidity sinks slowly - so acidity is no virtue per se - but maturity (sugar, potential alc, fruit) is.
Of course a good wine needs a certain healthy amount of acidity - it should keep the balance (for me more important in white than in red wines - I´m living in a wine country with high acidity) - but very noticable acidity (in red wines) is often disturbing for me.

Also when a wine matures tannins get softer and integrate, but acidity never disappears - and is the final (exitus) state of each wine.

Opinions?

You are obviously basing your premise with a sweeping generalization that everyone “here” prefers high acid wines. The greatest factor for appreciating higher acidity it would seem to me would be if wine is consumed with food, when it will have a mitigating and cleansing effect. I once heard acidity referred to as the “nervous system” of wine and a vigorous nervous system is important.

A wine with no acidity is often flabby and lacking balance. Certain varieties are better than others when the acidity is high but I hope for a decent acid level in all the wines I drink. Just makes them more expressive and interesting.

If you’re worried about your wines being out of balance with age then drink them earlier. There is also a mismomer that all wines are better with age on the bottle. It’s a case by case, or should I say bottle by bottle, thing.

Opinions are like palates - they all differ.

Your question could be paraphrased as: “How much is too much?”

Not really much room for fruitful discussion there.

You may not like high acid wines. Others do. What more is there to say?

Robert - this gets rewound every few months or so. There are different opinions on this board. Just remember some are AFWE and some aren’t.

Many of our friends like a more fruit forward wine, I like a more acid, restrained wine. I open two bottles when they are over, maybe three at times. Everyone is happy.

Important to recognise the debate is not “acidity - yes or no?”. Different wines (and at different ages), different settings, different palates, all shape our preferences.

For your own preferences, are you typically drinking with or without food? The old cliche is the wine that ‘needs food’ (the jokers would say those wines are the ones that make the AFWE wince). However have a genuine Lambrusco, with quite harsh acidity alongside some cured meats and that acidity cuts beautifully through the fatty meat. Both are improved by the matching, but alone the Lambrusco would be harder to like. If drinking away from the dining table, then the need for acidity lessens a little, but as Brian says, a wine with low acidity will taste flabby to many palates. i.e. it’s heavy, not at all refreshing, tastes more syrupy.

Regards
Ian

p.s. Whilst acidity remains fixed, it can soften with time, so what might be a little shrill on release, may become refreshing/juicy with cellaring. Worth trying some semi-mature / mature examples and see if that changes you perception. It’s often the cellaring styles that have firmer acidity, as if it’s not strong enough at the outset, the softening may make it seem flabby at maturity.

I cannot imagine that anyone believes this or they would be drinking lemon juice (0% alcohol) with no sugar added. The question is one of balance. Too many wines today have IMHO gone too far to the opposite extreme - very high alcohol and very low acidity. Well out of the norms of the types of wines people have loved for hundreds of years. These wines are very unbalanced (IMHO), not very refreshing (IMHO) and just are not enjoyable (again IMHO). I prefer wines in keeping in the tradition of the balance of fruit, alcohol, acidity, extract, etc., that have been loved by wine lovers for many generations.

A wine with no acidity is often flabby and lacking balance.

Did I say “wine with NO acidity” ?
No - I didn´t -

A silly solution - I simply chose a wine with less acidity - and don´t have to give up on maturity.

Moreover - many wines that seem slightly overripe when young gain a far better balance with age - because the fruit changes and unfoldes, but the acidity remains and comes forerward —

I prefer wines that taste good with food as well as without food. For instance I like to drink a sip or two in between some spoonfuls - and I want to enjoy the rest of the bottle also after having finished the plate - simply.

I don’t think anyone here suggested that you should drink wines any different from the wines you like. If you want to drink high alcohol, low acid wines, go with my blessing. Enjoy. Just don’t tell me what wines I should like, which really is what your original post tried to do. Just realize that the wines you are describing are a newer style of wines outside the historical norms of what fine wine is like. It is not really that we are drinking wines with higher acids and lower alcohol than has been the historical norm. Rather, you are describing wines with lower acid and higher alcohol than have been traditional norms for fine wine. Overall in the wine market today, alcohol levels are going up and acidity levels down, not vice-versa. Enjoy them if you want, but understand what is occurring.

I´m with Robert … talking about (red) Burgundies … I´ve never had a really mature Burgundy lacking in acidity … but I had a lot with pronounced acidity …

One problem might be that a) in many restaurants there are no mature bottles - and/or b) no time/patience to let the bottles age at home …

my 2c

KXXDC5FarhE

+1
Not sure what the point of this thread is

“Calling Acid Phreaks, we’ve gotr a heretic to deal with!”

Wines need acid for balance, and longevity. You might not like it. Fine, but don’t tell us there is “too much” acid in wines, them’s fightin’ words.

Ask a stupid question…

I need to look at things simply. I see ‘angles’ in wine on one side of the fulcrum and ‘rounds’ on the other side. ‘Angles’ are acidity and tannin. ‘Rounds’ are sugar (if present) and glycerol. As grapes go from underripe to overripe the rounds get more prominent and the angles become less so. [Fruit flavors vs vegetal flavors change along this pathway, but that is a tangent.]

Wine types with lots of tannin (Cab/Syrah) tend to need less acidity to act as the ‘angles’ side of things. The more collective angles they have the more ‘rounds’ are needed on the other side. That will probably be supplied mostly by glycerol which tracks natural alcohol levels very closely (alcohol in of itself is not a very ‘round’ thing).

Wine types with little tannin (whites and pinks in general) need more acidity to provide ‘angles’. With likely less total ‘angles’ these types of wine need less ‘rounds’ to be balanced (less glycerol/lower alcohol level). Wines with residual sugar (rounds) tend to need more acidity (angles) to achieve balance (Riesling, for example).

We all have our preferences for where the balance point lies. But I think this simple model works pretty well.

Fred, that is such a nice, simple, elegant way of thinking about it.

The rarest of all happenings here: a moment of perfect clarity. Very well said, indeed!

Fred,

That’s a great way of looking at things - and it certainly simplifies the situation nicely. Of course, there are many variables at play here, even with the varieties mentioned.

There is no doubt that those who are AFWE tend to favor wines that have higher acid levels, and as a broad generalization, that will be across all varieties. Perhaps this thread was started by seeing a number of threads regarding this lately.

And I think you can agree that everyone reacts to acidity a bit differently, just as they react to tannins, brett, TCA, etc . . .

Cheers.