I had forgotten, but you are absolutely correct that pH dictates color to a larger degree than one would expect. Low pH wines are typically red and shiftto purple as pH rises.
That said, my personal experience has been that a Pinot Noir at pH of 3.6 adjusted to 3.3 can taste less astringent and less tannic overall. The acidity will actually mask the perception of the tannins astringency. I am not sure about below that pH as the acidity is usually an equal contributor to the wine being unpleasant below 3.3.
I think that the tannin/astringency/pH effect is dependent on a number of other factors - type of tannins present (short chain vs long chain), amount of polymeric pigments present and type (short and long chain), and your overall sensitivity to astringency.
Jamie Goode also mentions the pH’s effect on increasing the astringency of tannins at least in his books Wine Science, second edition (p. 186), and I Taste Red, first edition (p. 50), if you happen to have either one of those books at hand.
This is one of the more interesting threads in a while. I’ve nominated it for the Hall of Fame.
I do suggest amending the title so people know we’ve branched into a conversation on wine aging.
I want to especially thank Marcus, Otto and Greg D for that detailed discussion. I think it helps bolster my recurring (some would say tiresome) plea (1, 2, 3,) for producers and retailers to publish technical data about wines (pH, ABV, TA, TDS, RS, malo/no malo, oak/stainless/concrete…, whole cluster/destemming, picking brix/oeschle, etc.), and for critics to demand it and publish it with reviews, because it really does matter when making purchasing decisions (1, 2).
I understand the concept that higher pHs and higher alcohols to lead to a decreased ‘perception’ of astringency - if I’m not mistaken, Marcus was positing the opposite, no (all other things considered)? Or am I not reading this correctly?
I am positing that lowering pH on an astringent wine can reduce the perception of astringency, within certain parameters.
Acid and tannin occupy a similar place in the perception of a wine, and bumping acid can moderate perception of astringency, at least in moderate whole cluster WV Pinot Noirs. I would not say that it did in every trial that I did, but happened with enough regularity that while my skill set was less experienced I employed this for a couple of our commercial releases. The wines do not become soft or “ready”, just less perceptably bitter and astringent.
I appreciate Jaimie Goode’s knowledge and writing but my real world experience differs.
It’s also extremely important to remember that we all perceive wines differently, and things like glassware and order of tasting can create large differences in perception.
I understand that low pH and high alcohol wines, in theory, perceive less astringently but I would wonder whether that’s due to less perceived acidity or increased texture…and I would also like to see the residual sugar in any of the low pH/high abv wines. Many bigger, modern “dry” red wines still have several grams of sugar still unfermented. In some regions it’s fashionable to come off the skins after 7-8 days, and in others ferments can be a short as 12-15 days. Many wines fermented in this fashion will have 2-6g rs still. Without knowing exactly how dry a wine is, a comparison of perceived astringency could have significant disparity between wines, and lower alcohol wines often ferment more completely. As do wines with longer ferments.
Not sure if you’re referencing my post above yours, but the pigment chamge with color is relatively well documented. Google should solve that. I first heard this referenced years ago in a couple of winemaking books that I purchased.
For my experience on lowering perception of astringency with pH adjustments, it was in my cellar and this is the first time it’s been written down.
Sorry, I bought everything that I could find on winemaking and enology when I first started, but have given most of it away.
The text was in relation to color pigments binding to the end of tannin chains. The text asserted that those molecules are often bound up and released later in the aging process.
If it’s about the fruit coming back, could it be that as tannins polymerize and fall out of solution with bottle age, the acid starts becoming the star and we associate that with freshness somehow?
That’s the question. On the one extreme, I know a few wines where the “poor” vintage left them undrinkable for around 40 years, then they became amazing. Other proximate vintages aged well, and showed well enough young back in those rustic days of viticulture, with some vintages being correctly called as great and reaching a higher high at maturity, but perhaps a decade earlier.
So, my thinking is getting enough less ripe material in the mix, but not more than what is needed.
On a related note, we just had an anomaly, the ''64 Ridge Zinfandel. Amazing, timeless wine. They were just starting and were strapped for cash, so they pressed about 60% of their Zin for rose. (Same year as their friend David Bruce made “the first white Zin”.) Following their mentor, Mario Gemello’s practice of “utilizing the skins”, they tossed the pressed material into the red ferment and made a very “big” wine. Perhaps that seemed too much at the time, as they didn’t do anything close since (but maybe to a much lesser degree). Mario made a helluva lot of wine back then, where up to a certain point it was all sold by the barrel and jug, but at the top end made some special juice. With all those ferms going, I’m sure he used good judgement which red was best suited to dump those so-much-left-to-give Chardonnay skins into, for example, but that’s exactly what he routinely did. Old school, old world practice.
Those are polymeric pigments, which work to stabilize color and reduce the appearance of astringency in that tannin molecule (the same tannin without the anthocyanin will appear more astringent). I have not seen any research showing that shows if they release, but if they do, one would expect color to drop out.
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