The Accuvin tests are fairly expensive. They range from $40 to $49 per 20-unit kit. This means it costs the user $2 to test for RS, $2 for acidity, and $2 for pH. So to test one wine sample for all three measurements costs $6. Still, if you are spending some serious cash on wine acquisitions, they are a useful tool for evaluating wines with an eye to cellar aging. I recently ordered some Accuvin test strips to play with. These little strips test wine for pH, sugar, acidity, lactic acid, malic acid, and free SO2. They don’t display an exact number, but a color that is matched to a range of measurements. I tested some against wines from our production and they were reliably accurate. They’re designed for the home winemaking market, but I also recommend the pH, residual sugar, and acidity test kits to serious wine aficionados.
What is "balance" in a wine? Perhaps it is indefinable, and a point of balance different for each individual. Learning about the relationship between acidity, pH and sugar in a wine helps a serious taster learn exactly which ratios he/she gravitates toward and prefers. A good number of today’s heavily extracted, purple powerhouses have significant sugar (+/- 1.5%) in order to balance the high alcohols. A little sweetness and a high pH will give wines viscosity and softness to buffer the "hot mouthfeel" that would otherwise result from high alcohol. This results in a wine that is inky, seductive, and impressive at a young age and in mass tastings. But for anyone serious about cellaring their wine acquisitions, a cautious review of a wine’s pH and sugar is advisable.
Wines that are very dry, with assertive acidity and a medium pH (3.5 to 3.7 for red wine) may taste "puckery" when young; but these are often the best candidates for long term cellaring. Some brisk acidity will keep the fruit flavors fresh over time. The concept is much the same as adding some fresh lemon juice to jam or fruit preserves before canning.
Wines with a high pH (3.9-4.3) taste soft and lush when young. Because these wines are generally picked later in the season, they may be matched by high alcohol (15-16%). These wines may also have a trace of R.S. (residual sugar) left in the wine to offset the heat from the alcohol. High levels of either, and particularly in combination, may lead to cellar problems ranging from rapid caramelization of the fruit to bacterial spoilage.
There are many wines that are a complex combination; not every wine falls at one end of the spectrum or the other. Acidity and pH have a loose inverse relationship but sometimes you’ll encounter a wine that has both high acidity and high pH, in which case you may have a winner in terms of "balance". Sometimes a wine will have some sweetness but also high acidity—again, this wine may be a great choice for the cellar.
When it comes to cellaring wine, only your own experience and tastes really matter. Some people enjoy the secondary and tertiary elements of an aged wine—leather, earth, mushroom, Asian spice. Some people age their wines so long I expect dust to spill out of the bottle. And others prefer to age only until the tannins and acidity soften somewhat (5 to 15 years depending on the variety) and drink the wines while they still retain at least an echo of freshly harvested fruit.
Thank you for an extremely informative post which I only stumbled upon by accident! You should write this up as an article and publish it.
Posted by: The Art of Successful Cooking | January 29, 2009 at 05:19 AM