Food, wine, and acid. Aragon’s Cru tasting, 19 Jan

There are three types of wines. That is a huge statement but an accurate one. In the massive and complex world of wine there are food wines, drinking wines, and wines that can be both. A big reason for the three broad categories is the amount of acid in the wine, and how that acid hits your palate. From here it gets complicated as you get into tannin and alcohol levels, then dive deeper into the science of how humans taste wine.Let’s go to the part of how the acid hits your palate. Food. Specifically the proteins and fats in that food will drastically alter how that acid hits your palate. A “food” wine generally has a lot of acid and that acid is up front on the palate. If you are eating food, such as a typical charcuterie board, that acid will be mellowed by the fats and washed down by the proteins, marrying just right to give your palate a pleasant experience.There was a good charcuterie board at tonight’s tasting. The two Crowd Favorites came down to the fact of this: did you start eating on that board before tasting Frescolbaldi Terre More 2020, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc, Merlot and Syrah from Tuscany Italy? If you ate before, you had a good experience with that wine. Intense but with mellowed red berry and cedar. If you didn’t eat before then it was very acidic and unpleasant, and therefore you probably really enjoyed the next wine in the line up, which was the other Crowd Favorite, Serial Cabernet 2020 from Paso Robles California. This was a “drinking” wine but with the right choice, could be had with food. The strong meat flavors of the standard charcuterie board would knock out some of the deeper notes of red cherry and blackberry. Should you eat/partake in the standard wine snacks that are usually offered during a wine tasting? A great question for a future discussion.