Proper Balance is Paramount in Wine Production

Public television’s “Simply Ming” is one of my favorite cooking shows. Recently, host Ming Tsai and another chef prepared a halibut entrée that also included rice wine vinegar, orange zest, palm sugar and Swiss chard.

My first thought was that this seemed like a rather odd combination of ingredients, but the point of the show was to emphasize how dissimilar foods, when brought together, can create balance in the final dish.

In this case, the acidity of the vinegar, oil of the zest, sweetness of the sugar and chalkiness of the chard combined with the fish to provide a perfect balance of flavors.

A good wine is similar to a good recipe in that proper balance is critical to the finished product.

What exactly is a well-balanced wine? I like to define it as one in which the wine’s elements of taste seamlessly mesh together so that no single element dominates the others.

Wines are comprised of many elements of taste but if you refer to these six: fruit, acidity, alcohol, sugar, tannins and, in the case of barrel fermenting, oak, most winemakers would agree that you’d be covering the essentials.

To get an idea of how important each of these elements is to a wine’s balance, think of what a wine would taste like if just one of them is exaggerated.

Wines that are too fruity are often difficult to pair with food. There’s nothing wrong with a fruit-forward wine, but too much fruit can get in the way of the food’s flavors…and, for example, who wants to serve a steak with a cabernet that taste like a blueberry?

Highly acidic wines carry a harsh, edginess that can make them unpleasantly sharp or even bitter to the taste, while an out-of-balance alcohol content can be equally obnoxious. If the alcohol is too low, the wine can taste thin and watery; too high and you’ve got something with a “hot” aftertaste.

Although some wine drinkers prefer their wines to be sweet, you’ll again find that an overly sweet wine severely limits the foods you can pair with it.

Strong tannins can make a wine chalky and undrinkable, while too much oak can turn a wine into an “oak bomb” and render whatever fruits you were hoping to taste, flavorless.

Each element of taste plays an important role in the wine’s total package. And just as an off-key soprano can spoil an entire chorus, an improper balance of fruit, acid, alcohol, sugar, tannin or oak in a wine can turn it from potentially spectacular to perfectly awful.