Having run a co-op for a decade, and had 26 years in production, I’ve seen a lot of different interactions and prejudices in regards to the pH and TA interplay.
Some folk hit the same alc and TA on all their Pinot noir while others play it looser.
That’s right, I just added alcohol level. You can’t ignore it, it’s part of mouthfeel just like the other two.
The difference between 12.7% and 13.2% if worth noting.
When is the test?
Big time. Making this mutually intelligible is very time consuming. I run sensory panels with winemakers, and after almost 3 years working with the same winemakers I’m just starting to understand the shapes one of them draws, the colors one of them tastes, the different sensitivities they have to different types of bitterness and astringency. I do think that is one of the real values of tasting regularly with the same group of people - you can develop a “team palate” and really understand each other’s experiences.
Hi Brian,
You can’t really isolate these things. Trying to view TA and pH separately from a specific wine is kind of like saying, “a golfer has a driver and a short wedge, if he uses the short wedge 7 times and the driver 14 times, what is the round like? If he uses the wedge 4 times and the driver 16 times what is the difference?” Without seeing the course, you can’t know.
Generally speaking:
If pH goes down, then TA has to move upwards.
To move pH down and have TA remain constant, you are talking about two different wines.
To have pH go down, how it will translate organoleptically, you would need to know what acid was causing the pH to go down.
If you look at this as a multi-verse where the same wine in one universe is 3.2 pH and 7.0g TA and in another is 3.1 pH and 7.0g TA, you need to know which, of the multitude of acid combinations (between tartaric, malic, and va) that caused the decrease in pH to occur. Because there will be different aromatics to most of the different permutations.
Generally speaking, the type of acid is more important than the numerical change. And all of the changes in aromatics are affected by the amount of glycerin, tannin, dry extract, alcohol, etc.
I do know that higher acids can really unlock the nose of a wine (from bench trials with acid additions), but how we would percevive that change would dramatically change depending upon the abv of the wine you are talking about.
Frankly, trying to reduce wine perception to define specific variables, IN MY OPINION, is almost always a fool’s errand. You can’t do it. And when we try to force that to happen the common result, because humans are rarely afraid of a fool’s errand, is bad information that gets applied as if it were fact. I post this because I see this type of conclusion drawn routinely.
Like Tyrion Lannister, we like to know things. But in wine perception it’s best to stay a blank slate and listen to the wine. Again, just my opinion.
Nothing like Eyrie though.
More like Goodfellow with the stems. But I still think Oregon has them on finesse…if for no other reason than I would be happy to do a DDLC tasting with Oregon just to taste the wines again. It’s been a few years and I enjoy the high whole cluster style quite a bit.
I’ve heard that as well. I started out using just pH (for Pinot Noir). Pretty quickly it became apparent that what the acids are in the wine is very important and TA is useful as well.
Actually, sometimes it’s really useful to have that information before something goes wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, a great vineyard with an engaged winemaker of some practice and skill can often yield good to really good wines without any labwork.
The most important word in that sentence is “often”. Flying blind is great fun as long as you don’t live in a mountainous region.
PREACH!
Have you ever seen any such thing happen with fruit from a particular vineyard, from one vintage to the next? So, for example, one year you pick at 3.2 pH and 7.0g TA, and the next year you pick that vineyard at 3.35 pH and 7.0g TA?
If I’m understanding you correctly, and I think I am, we’re talking about one (or two) of many inter-related components of wine here, and even those one or two components are comprised of a multitude of sub-components. And these components (and sub-components) really cannot be separated from all the others. Thanks for explaining. I approached my line of inquiry in the manner I did because that’s typically how I best understand a particular factor in an equation/system, and the role/impact it may have on the equation/system as a whole — change that one factor, and that one factor only, to see what differences that makes in the output. Sometimes this is informative, sometimes it’s a nothingburger, and sometimes it yields Fool’s Gold.
Thank you, and also everyone else, who has entertained my rookie impossible questions in good faith. 
Cheers!
This could happen pretty easily. You simply have more of the “power” acids in the lower pH and more of the weaker acids in the higher pH (simplifying). But assigning flavor differences to those two juices or wines is still not realistic. Outside of basic this wine tastes like it has more acid (and even that isn’t a given). Many other things may be altered due to to the pH difference, but determining what truly creates those differences is incredibly difficult as thousands of other things impart impacts on perception.
There is a basic reality that a pH of 3.0 is much more powerful than 3.2 which is much more powerful than 3.35. But if you took those three pHs and kept TA constant, there would be seriously different acid combinations at play. So flavors, texture, etc. impacted by these different acid profiles would be very challenging to try and empirically compare.
Agree wholeheartedly with this as a big fan of DDLC (and Eyrie for that matter). Two different wines and I would say that DDLC has more fruit, but balances it with whole cluster savoriness and tannins and excellent acidity from their windswept vineyards.
I would add that pH can also vary (holding TA constant) due to the amount of potassium in the grapes and juice. This is never constant year-to-year and I am sure there are other buffering compounds as well but the it’s the main one (and at any rate, the only one our wine labs test for and report). And then, in addition, a whole cluster ferment will pick up more potassium from the stems, shifting the pH higher (TA is still constant).
I agree with Marcus that it could be more malic vs tartaric acid for the 3.35pH juice; but it could also be a vintage with higher potassium. We have very little understanding as to why potassium (K) varies from year to year, but researchers have shown that higher K occurs under wetter conditions. But these findings don’t seem to track in the Willamette Valley.
The simple answer here is yes . . . 
Thanks, Marcus. This all makes sense to me, and I think it’s quite interesting! Hopefully others are as intrigued with all of this as I am. Cheers!
Curious for the winemakers here… does anyone actually run labs, see the TA and make a pick decision based on that? I would GUESS that most of the time one tastes the fruit, decides one is close (or there) and then runs the numbers to confirm the flavor? I am just assuming that it is not the other way around… not sure of flavor but the TA and pH are in the zone and therefore “I am gonna pick.” For myself, once I get to know a vineyard I kind of get a second-sense of where it is at and the numbers just fill in the gaps. But I will sacrifice numbers for flavor 10x out of 10.
Seed lignification was a significant factor on my picking decisions. All the other numbers can be shifted. Seed tannin cannot.
I like to use all of the tools available. When I start sampling for harvest, I run Brix, pH, TA & Malic. Obviously the juice has to taste good too. All of those data points are used to make decisions. I am more likely not to pick because malic or TA are too high, even though the juice tastes good.