That has been my limited understanding. Anyone feel free to correct me if I am missing anything or off.
The tannins and acids limit oxidation. Over time, the tannins combine which helps them taste smoother. While the acids bind with alcohols making the wine taste less acidic. I believe the acidity also sort of amplifies the sensation of the tannins.(*Edited due to Otto’s correction) But as they both soften, the binding of acids and alcohols also helps increase the complexity of the wine, bringing in tertiary flavors.
At some point the wine is out of tannins to combine and out of acids to bind with the alcohol, and the new tertiary flavors have taken over the fruit, so with the fruit mostly gone the perceived acidity slowly starts to dominate and the wine declines.
In order to have a wine that will evolve and “improve” over the course of 60 years, it would have to be so tannic and acidic that it would be super astringent young.
Which makes sense. I guess I’ve often made the mistake of equating “this tastes good young” with “this drinks well young”. It does make me wonder how the more modern-styled wines that I hear about in Barolo drink well young, but also have a decades-long lifespan. I must be missing something in that equation.
You got the acidity and tannins wrong way around. The pH of the wine influences the astringency of the wine - a low-acid wine (high pH) can feel very soft with almost negligible tannins, while the same amount of tannins in a lighter, high-acid wine with low pH (like cooler-vintage Burgundy) might make the wine surprisingly grippy and tannic.
And to my understanding, any combinations that happen with acidity are very minimal in proportion to the acid content and the wine is going to run out of molecules acids can bind with before it is going to run out of acids. I’ve understood that while there is some evolution happening in a wine as it ages, the titratable acidity and pH remains quite stable throughout the life of a wine, ie. the acidity is not really diminishing, no matter how long a wine is aged.
And while tannins do protect wine from oxidation, I’ve understood that pH is of the highest importance. This is pretty obvious when you think there are dry white wines and sparkling wines that can age and improve over the course of 60 years and they don’t have any obvious tannins.
Not necessarily as tannic and acidic as nebbiolo, though. Many cabernet-based wines can last that long, and even pre-Parker, they were nothing like as astringent as young Barolo. Top Burgundies can last many without a wall of tannin, though they typically have good acid levels. Likewise Rioja, as someone else mentioned.
that is actually what I meant but misstated. Thanks for correcting.
And to my understanding, any combinations that happen with acidity are very minimal in proportion to the acid content and the wine is going to run out of molecules acids can bind with before it is going to run out of acids. I’ve understood that while there is some evolution happening in a wine as it ages, the titratable acidity and pH remains quite stable throughout the life of a wine, ie. the acidity is not really diminishing, no matter how long a wine is aged.
Interesting about the amount of acidity relative to the amount binding. I had no idea on that. I agree on the pH levels remaining constant. What I meant here is more that the perception of acidity changes rather than the actual pH.
I thought a lot about this on my recent German trip. I am not a big fan of the super cuvees. However in Germany a lot of the wines just below GG are meant to be drunk young and when looking through that lens I see them in a whole different light.
For example in 2021 at Schäfer Fröhlich you have three dry wines from Felseneck - Schiefergestein which are from younger vines, Felseneck GG and the auction Felseneck Finale from a special barrel.
Yes you could say the Schiefergestein is a lesser wine but you can also say for the money it is an excellent early drinking mini-GG and the right wine for the first 1-5 years.
I am fairly new into drinking more critically/ thoughtfully, so I haven’t had the chance to follow wines over 20 years, but I am becoming more and more skeptical about the projected lifespans though.
I recently had a 1995 Falesco Montiano that was drinking very well. It is the first time I had it, so I dont know what it was like 20 years prior, but Parker gave a drinking window of 1997-2009, while CT says 2005-2016. Not quite fair to compare those because Parker made that assessment in 1997 while CT’s users tried the wine much later, but the last 2 ratings are from 2018 and 2019 and they are 95 and 94 respectively, while the avg rating is 91.1
On the other end, I am now much more worried about the amount of more modern wines I have purchased under the idea that they will age gracefully for 20+ years.
I’m glad I tend to enjoy the less modern wines more, seems less risky for long term aging.
The next question is, we’re more modern styled wines being produced in the 90s or earlier that would be a good reference point for ageability? Or did that style not really take off before the 2000s?
I fully agree on the latter point–pH is often critical since a low pH allows for more free sulfur that scavenges oxygen that would otherwise lead to oxidative byproducts in the wine. There is a pH (I don’t recall precisely, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.8 to 4.0) where SO2 tends to remain bound, unless one adds increasingly large quantities of its precursor.
The pH and the titratable acidity are related, but not identical. When a wine is precipitating potassium bitartrate, the reaction is acid + base → water + salt. An acid species is being removed from solution due to this precipitate, thus the TA will drop, while the pH will also change depending on its initial value. (See https://www.awri.com.au/industry_support/winemaking_resources/fining-stabilities/hazes_and_deposits/potassium_instability/ , interestingly this suggests a problematic feedback effect in a high TA, high pH wine, where pH increases as potassium bitartrate forms, which would in turn reduce free SO2).
As far as tannin-acid impression, I don’t doubt there is interaction between the two that leads to different perceptions. But tannins can arise from different sources (skins, oak, seeds, stems), can be of different ripeness levels, and can be short-chain or long chain/polymerized. Winemaking, such as microxygenation (by barrel or technlogical means), can influence polymerization of tannins. It’s certainly possible to have a low acid wine with astringent, hard tannins. Though ‘on average’ a wine with higher acidity will come from fruit with less phenolic ripeness, hence a correlation will be present between acid level and tannin ripeness. There are so many variables, though, that ‘on average’ has little meaning.
Based upon my experience, all of those make winery work more convenient, not better:
“Easier work on higher slopes” -labor is a different subject, but this changes efficiency not quality
Better transport-same thing, it also allows more volume but unless you are transporting grapes for hundreds of miles, this is really still not, IMO, a big quality impact. Pressing grapes immediately is not actually the melodramatic issue 99.9-% of winemakers present it as.
“Sourcing pregerred barrels”-that worked well for Gaja but I don’t enjoy those wines, so I see this as stylistic choices rather than overall quality.
Old barrels? Then why do I CONSTANTLY hear the trope of neutral wood from winemakers? Not to mention the many, many posts about the negative feelings towards new oak here.
Temperature control is nice but not a game changer of better wines. The 2014 Richard’s Cuvee we drank in NYC never had any aspect of it connected to temperature control(nor any other of my wines) outside of a cool cellar. Which is definitely pre-supposed.
The areas where modern technology truly offers significant improvement, in my opinion, mostly involve microbial suppression and remediation. That and my forklift(convenience, but I love it). You can also add technology for frost mitigation as well because no crop is the worst outcome. But by and large, technology makes it easier to succeed consistently with less labor. Don’t get me wrong, those are VERY necessary assets in our modern economy and wineries today would probably not function without them.
More convenient winemaking can make “better” wines! It’s hard to find people to do inconvenient work, and if you can replace inconvenient work with machines, you get all that work done and efficiently, letting people focus on stuff they want to do. Even in my job, when automation makes boring tasks easier, it results in a better product. Of course, those tasks could have been done by humans, but once humans no longer have to do them, they can focus on more higher value add tasks. I love Cote Rotie and Cornas, but I am honestly unsure I would want to work those vineyards.
Better transport - I’ve had too many cooked wines or stories about certain importers. My point wasn’t about transport to and from the winery itself, but to consumers. Especially for older European wines, my hit rate is quite low. I look forward to opening my own wines bought on release (and have started), but those are at most 15 years old, when I was buying less. Sourcing older Burgundy in the US is beyond a crapshoot, and poor transportation was certainly a feature of that.
Barrels - I think there are certainly some winemakers for whom their choice of barrels certainly makes a difference Quite a few Domaines in Burgundy work with multiple producers because they analyze the overall effect on the wines based on the overall effect.
Temperature control - I certainly don’t think this is a game changer, but as a combination with other things, it makes a difference. I was just at a producer in Champagne who are working slightly differently because they have an above ground cellar and are trying to control humidity to avoid evaporation - which they can now do with a lot more precision.
No, there’s not a certain value of pH - it’s a continuum. The lower the pH, the more sulfites remain free. The higher the pH, the more SO2 gets bound immediately. The amount one needs to add SO2 to get a certain amount of free SO2 at pH 3.0 was hundredfold at pH 4.0. Source: https://vinlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/pH-and-SO2-table.pdf
Furthermore, SO2 does not scavenge oxygen. It’s a gross simplification of the process and a somewhat incorrect one. A more correct simplification would be that oxygen oxidizes alcohol into acetaldehyde (the main element human perceives as an aroma and taste of oxidation) and free SO2 binds with acetaldehyde, rendering it non-aromatic, ie. imperceptible to human. The alcohol in the wine oxidizes - or, simply put, the wine oxidizes - all the time, but only after the free SO2 is depleted, the wine starts to feel oxidized. However, even much before this, the wine is slowly filling up with oxidative byproducts (for example you can see the red wines turning maroon and white wines darkening in color much, much earlier than they start to show any oxidized aromas of flavors - this color change happens as the compounds that make up the appearance of the wine get oxidized).
The pH and the titratable acidity are related, but not identical. When a wine is precipitating potassium bitartrate, the reaction is acid + base → water + salt. An acid species is being removed from solution due to this precipitate, thus the TA will drop, while the pH will also change depending on its initial value. (See > https://www.awri.com.au/industry_support/winemaking_resources/fining-stabilities/hazes_and_deposits/potassium_instability/ > , interestingly this suggests a problematic feedback effect in a high TA, high pH wine, where pH increases as potassium bitartrate forms, which would in turn reduce free SO2).
Indeed. That’s why I mentioned them both separately.
As far as tannin-acid impression, I don’t doubt there is interaction between the two that leads to different perceptions.
You don’t need to doubt, because it’s a fact that has been researched for a long time. Just google “wine ph tannin astringency perception” or something along those lines and you should end up with many results, including several scientific papers on the subject.
But tannins can arise from different sources (skins, oak, seeds, stems), can be of different ripeness levels, and can be short-chain or long chain/polymerized. Winemaking, such as microxygenation (by barrel or technlogical means), can influence polymerization of tannins. It’s certainly possible to have a low acid wine with astringent, hard tannins. Though ‘on average’ a wine with higher acidity will come from fruit with less phenolic ripeness, hence a correlation will be present between acid level and tannin ripeness. There are so many variables, though, that ‘on average’ has little meaning.
Definitely, there are lots of different tannin sources and the tannins can be of different qualities. But one still needs to remember that the pH (and alcohol!) has a noticeable effect on how one perceives tannins - the exact same tannins feel more astringent in a low pH medium and less astringent in high-pH medium. The exact same tannins taste noticeably more bitter in a high-alcohol wine compared to a low-alcohol wine (an effect quite noticeable in 2017 Nebbiolos, because this was a hot and dry vintage resulting in small, thick-skinned and very ripe grapes making very tannic, high-alcohol wines - these wines can be noticeably tannic and bitter in character).
We actually tasted this stuff in our wine study programme by adding powdered grape tannins to a low-pH and high-pH wine and adjusting their levels of alcohol from low to high. The tannins were always of the same quality, yet tasted noticeably different in a different medium.
pH is a bit more complicated than that, though you are spot on that acidity remains basically the same through the life of the wine. Rather than acidity reducing and being less intrusive as a wine ages, the textural/mouthfeel elements in the wine increase, and fruit is released as sulfur levels drop and tannins(in red wines) unbind from fruit molecules. The acid becomes balanced as the wine builds around it.
But acidity is not a singular thing in wines, it’s a group of disparate acids affecting flavor and pH in combination. For anyone who doesn’t know(I am sure that Otto does) these are the big three acids in wine:
1)Tartaric acid is a strong acid with a ripe fruit acid based perception.
2)Malic is a weak acid with a strong green component in perception, AND a strong aggressive perception. It contributes far less to low pH, and quite a bit of acidic presence.
3)Lactic acid is a softer and weaker acid than malic but still contains a less pleasant taste perception than tartaric acids.
Over ripe grapes will have low acidity and higher pH
Ripe grapes have good acidity, and depending upon the balance of tartaric to malic, a range of pH.
Under ripe fruit will often have both high perceived acidity and can have a higher pH as well, as malic acid still dominates the wine.
That said, pH is a HUGE impact on the efficacy of sulfur(SO2) in the wine. Low pH wines will stay fresh much longer than high pH wines.
However, sulfur also binds up anthocyanins and pigment in the wine, leaving low pH wines, in youth, less fruit dense, and less deeply hued. For some varietals this is less noticeable but in Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo it usually shows.
Tannins also are more complex, and it’s important to note that these bitter and astringent compunds are varied and complex molecules that have been polymerizing and combining since the fruit was crushed. And typically they are very durable.
Perhaps most importantly, IMO, they also bind themselves to fruit. Which is released back into the wine as the tannins polymerize and drop out. This is a bit like a magic trick, as you do NOT perceive the fruit while it is bound visually or by taste.
This is how, as Jasper Morris put it, 1969 DRC can not taste good for 40 years and then be sublime.
I’ve had 6 bottles of 1993 Pinot Noirs in the last year and every one of them has been remarkably good, and with fresh fruit. These were wines that I also had in youth, and they tasted good then as well. There have been dumb phases in between, but pH is probably the driving force in them lasting 30 years, with tannins assisting.
But the best bottles of old Oregon Pinot Noir that I have had recently were wines that also had quite a bit of stem inclusion. They had an extra gear of fruit and considerably more good tertiary flavors. Tannins both help to maintain fresh fruit, and they also add the depth of the tertiary flavors through forming new compunds and longer chain molecules(which generally have a bigger mouthfeel).
I agree with your comment on bitterness and alcohol, but low pH and tannins often do not taste more astringent in Pinot Noir.
Also, I would caution against “the exact same tannins” as no two bottles of a wine are exactly the same. It’s an extraordinarily complex range of compunds that are by no means uniform, even if they taste similar to us.
From my understanding, in Montalcino it was the 90s, but it varies a bit by region and has probably been more gradual. I think it is also a bit hard to parse out because the modernization wasn’t just one change, but more a series of changes in winemaking.
These quotes below are from Kerin O’Keefe’s book Brunello di Montalcino: Understanding and Appreciating One of Italy’s Greatest Wines
“By the 1997 vintage, hailed at the time as the Greatest Vintage Ever in all of Italy by the majority of wine critics, who inexplicably could not taste beyond the vintage’s very forward and overripe nature, a good number of Brunellos were of the darker, softer, and rounder kind, with excessive toast and oak sensations.”
“Of the twelve 1997 Brunellos presented at the quarantennale anniversary tasting (2007), seven were past their prime with almost no noticeable fruit remaining, but instead only wood and alcohol aromas that carried over to the palate with drying wood tannins… Of the other five, only two were very good, boasting delicious fruit and staying power. Not only had these two Brunellos been traditionally crafted,…”
To make it even more difficult though, the impact of those changes varies based on the grape and terroir. I dont mind the fact that Gulfi ages their 4 Cru Nero d’Avola in smaller 500L barrels for 2 years. The 4 wines are 100% Nero d’Avola, they are made exactly the same way, with grapes from vineyards right next to each other and at very similar altitudes. Yet they don’t lose their identity. Each wine is very distinctly different from the others because of the different soils and I tend to believe that the oak actually improves their capacity for aging.
This indeed! If you have a blind wine known to be Pinot Noir, already from its appearance whether the wine is from cooler climate / colder vintage or warmer climate / sunnier vintage. Although many different things influence wine’s color and appearance, the difference between the color intensities in Pinot Noirs at pH 3,2 and 3,6 can be huge!
It’s also interesting to see how the pH change can change the appearance of a Pinot Noir drastically: if you have some young very low-pH Pinot Noir that is very translucent bright cherry-red color, have a small splash of it in a wine glass, then start slowly adding water to the wine. Even though water dilutes the wine, it still darkens in color at first and the bright cherry-red color first starts turning dark red then towards purple and finally blueish hue. A fun and easy home experiment!
I agree with your comment on bitterness and alcohol, but low pH and tannins often do not taste more astringent in Pinot Noir.
Also, I would caution against “the exact same tannins” as no two bottles of a wine are exactly the same. It’s an extraordinarily complex range of compunds that are by no means uniform, even if they taste similar to us.
I mean in the hypothetical sense. Just as I described our experiment of adding powdered tannins to a white wine above, we actually had two different wines with the exact same tannins - we measured the amount of wine and the amount of tannins added to the wine, so we had two different wines with the exact same tannin content. And, like I said, it did taste noticeably different.
And certainly tannins in Pinot Noir don’t taste more astringent compared to more tannic wines, because there are more tannins in those wines. It’s basically impossible to have a wine from another variety that would have the exact tannin content and quality as in a Pinot Noir. However, if one were to adjust the acidity in a Pinot Noir from, say, 3,65 to 3,15, the tannic content would remain unchanged in this wine, but the tannins should taste much more astringent in the one adjusted to lower pH. This is what I meant by my earlier comment on pH’s effect on astringency of the “same” tannins.
Yes, my last sentence about our modern economy is meant to convey this. Currently, few people want to do farm work at farm wages, even in Oregon much less the Northern Rhone. And it’s a tribute to German sturdiness that Mosel vineyards exist.
But that only levels the playing field, because back in the day that labor force existed. Our wines aren’t better for it, we just get to make wines(and more wines) because we have mechanization in some areas.
And machine picked Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is crap. It will jump the low bar of not being bad, or producing solid wines in great vintages, but I can’t imagine switching to it.
Storage in transport is better, and if I step away from winemaker to consumer, this is definitely an advantage. But if the revenue per bottle was the same then as now(in adjusted $$/€) I suspect there would have been more care. And going back to communication, if a consumer in America could email or post a negative experience that went either directly to the winemaker or to an audience of millions, I suspect transport would have seen more care.
I can’t imagine using cooperage differently.
One of the most flawed thought processes in winemaking is the idea that anything is the “best”. Vintage variation dictates that fruit will differ significantly from year to year. Cluster morphology does as well, as does difference in terroir, as does fermentation kinetics, vine age, etc.
So any singular “best” is a fail. Good winemaking requires that you be well rounded in all techniques and that you have as many tools at your disposal as possible. I use 5 coopers, and a broad range of barrel size and a range of forests from those coopers.
This still doesn’t guarantee better quality. I work in a similar above ground facility, and it’s not the technology that makes a difference, it’s the awareness of the need to pay attention to humidity. Also-if they are controlling humidity to avoid increasing/decreasing abv, that’s quality. If they are trying to avoid evaporating as much, that’s volume and economics rather than quality.
If they are avoiding evaporation to reduce loss, then they are retaining water/alcohol in the wine and will have less flavorful wines. As evaporation from barrel is a form of concentration of flavor(you evaporate clear liquids, not flavor, tannin, or acids).
And precision of control should be avoided, IMO. Winemakers are not prescient, so we do not know what is best or what we are losing when we dictate terms to the wines. Temperature control can offer a winemaker their favorite yeast esters or texture, but at the cost of all things generated at other temperatures, and the complex nature of wines that are fermented through a range of temperatures that naturally occur in uncontrolled ferments.
Worse yet is the very human belief that more is better…leaving us with undrinkable IPAs, coke zero, Starbucks, and fruit that needs 20-30% water adds to get to 15-16%.
Quite a few Domaines in Burgundy work with multiple producers because they analyze the overall effect on the wines based on the overall effect.