Everyone has their taste, which is the primary in determining whether you like some wine. Let’s look at the basic wine characteristics to find your favorite. During your wine tasting, there are three essential components that you can examine: appearance, smell, and taste.

Balance Is Among the Basic Wine Characteristics – It May Be the Most Important

The perfect balance of the ingredients of the wine structure, which every oenologist tries to achieve throughout his life in his wines, is the most important indicator of his success. After all, like everything else in life, there is no happiness without balance. But what parameters are compared to get the result?

Fruit with tannin, alcohol with sugar, acid with fruit. Suppose everything runs smoothly like clockwork and works together. In that case, it is also an indicator that the components are not mutually contradictory, that there is no subordination, and then you can say: Yes, the wine is balanced!

The Complexity of the Wine

Wines are simple if they have only one or two noticeable characteristics. Some Pinot Grigio can be citrusy and have high acidity with possibly a hint of floral notes. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s not well made or enjoyable; it’s just the style of this variety. And many certainly like that.

But in order to be considered complex, a wine must offer different aromas and flavors: primary (fruit, spice, floral notes from grapes), secondary (those that come from maturing in wood or from fermentation techniques such as sur lie, mixing lees) and tertiary (components flavors that come from aging in the bottle such as damp earth or mushrooms).

In addition, the characteristics that distinguish the wine are noticeable acidity and (or) tannins, which build an attractive wine personality in the structural composition. So, when a wine has intriguing and sometimes magnificent aromas and flavors in combination with memorable acidity, crafted and present tannins, and that wine fills the entire palate and is prone to development and positive changes in the glass, it is an indication that you have a complex wine in your hands.

What Gives a Wine ‘Length’?

The length may be the most recognizable attribute of the wine. It describes how long the taste of wine or other components stays on your tongue. When evaluating, ask yourself if it is several seconds or if the vision dissipates immediately after absorption. Can you remember if the flavors are pleasant or a bit sharp, astringent, or bitter when you swallow the wine?

The length and finish of a wine can be intriguing, very satisfying, and practically begging you for another sip or the next glass. In wines that have this prominent characteristic, we notice that “the length is present”.

Intensity and Expressiveness

If the length can be measured in time (seconds), then the characteristic “intensity” can be detected both on the nose and on the palate and expressed as the aromatic “power” of the wine.

When the aromas jump out of the glass, or the flavors almost become three-dimensional, these are signs of an intense wine. On the other hand, if you can easily recognize in the wine the characteristics clearly related to a certain grape variety, region, or terroir, it is a pure expression of what is compressed in the bottle, and it can be said that this indicator describes a certain grape or even an entire region. The terms expressivity and extractivity should be distinct because the extract can be measured.

It is a collection of all the aromatic properties of wine; more precisely, it is all the non-volatile ingredients found in it in the form of colloidal or other solutions. The quality of wine largely depends on the extracted content; those with low content are disharmonious and empty, while others with too much extract are heavy and dense. Desirable fullness and harmony characterize wines with good extract contents.

The conclusion could be that when you determine that wine has complexity, length, intensity, expressiveness, and balance, you can also determine its overall quality. It is considered acceptable if it has only one of the mentioned characteristics. Already, two ticked characteristics recommend it most probably as a good wine. But it is an extraordinary wine if it satisfies each of the mentioned items before you.