For the past year or so, I’ve noticed that some acidic wines just destroy my stomach, while others do not affect it at all. I wonder about added acidification, as it seems to me that some wines seem to have natural acid, and others seems to have a sort of citric acid both flavor and feel - it’s markedly different, and particularly when it gets to my stomach.
Am I just way off base here, or would added acid be a possible culprit? I wonder if I’m sensitive to acidification in wine…
My take is that you will never know. Some wines wrench me too, could be citric, could be sorbates, could be metal…
The acid that is used for additions is the same as naturally occurs in the grapes as far as I know. I have thought I’ve detected acidification that was not handled well by a wine having a pronounced margarita mix type of quality on the finish.
Have any examples of wines that do and don’t cause your stomach problems?
If I were to guess…I’d say it’s a TA vs PH thing. TA is what your taste buds perceive as acidic (mostly anyways…moderately high acid wines that have some tannins can appear more acidic than they are…the tannins appear to boost the perception of acidity). Bacterial stability is determined by the PH (not the TA). I’m guessing that your stomach is reacting to wines that have a low PH (it’s probably a combination of factors that cause your stomach stress…ph being one of them). If this is true, then you’d be ok with high TA and moderate to high PH wines (the high TA would make the wine appear acidic, the moderate to high PH would be low enough in actual acid (i.e. dissociated hydrogen ions) to keep your stomach happy).
Could also be a combination of high alcohol and high acidity that’s causing you problems as well.