The official results of that historic tasting: Take, for example, the famous ' Judgement of Paris' of 1976: Where French judges, in a blind tasting, were 'fooled' into rating California wines above a few all-time great French growths, mostly because these judges had no prior experience of California wines. There is absolutely no accounting for taste. Aromatic qualities - such as oak, herbiness, or fruitiness - are all subjective to a beholder's ability to perceive them, which depends upon the volume of a person's 'taste memory,' as the late Michael Broadbent MW famously put it.Īfter that, all bets are off, because what may seem like a balanced wine to one person may be rough and excessive to another person, or weak and wimpy to still another person. The body is in balance when alcohol does not taste harsh or hot. Tannin is balanced when the wine is not unpleasantly bitter or astringent. That is to say: Acidity is balanced when a wine is neither too puckery nor so soft that it lacks freshness or crispness.
Popular wine influencers learn about Lodi Zinfandel by tasting them 'blind' (from left, Casleah Herwaldt, Lexi Stephens, Desiree Harrison-Brown, and Jamie Knee).Ī wine can be described as 'balanced' when all its sensory qualities are in harmony, without an excess of one element or another.
A new (or is it old?) definition of wine balance
