The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...1. Acidity is necessary to counterbalance the sweetness in wine. Without it, wines may taste cloying and sickly sweet.
2. It can be detected by a sensation of crispness in the mouth, particularly along the sides of the tongue. After spitting/swallowing the wine, if you leave your mouth open, the speed with which it fills with saliva is an indicator of the level of acidity of the wine.
3. Wines from cooler regions (Northern France, England, New Zealand) tend to have higher acidity. By contrast, some Australian wines are so low in natural acid that they have to be artificially acidified.
4. The level of acidity is measured on the pH scale, with most wines having a pH of between 2.9 and 3.9.
5. The most common acids in wine are tartaric, malic and lactic acid. Tartaric acid has the most direct bearing on the structure and taste of the wine. Malic acid is found in green fruits such as apples and is present in higher proportions in cold climate wines. Lactic acid is milder and produces milky textures in wine. It is produced by lactic acid bacteria, which convert malic acid and sugar into lactic acid, a process known as malolactic fermentation.
