Tannin vs Body vs Acidity in Wine: Side by Side Chart

Tannin, acidity and body are three separate sensations in one sip. Tannin is the drying grip on your gums, felt rather than tasted. Acidity makes your mouth water along the sides of the tongue. Body is weight, from skimmed milk to cream. Big reds often carry all three, but a wine can be high in one and low in another.

Sensation	What it feels like	Where you feel it	Sip test	Food it goes with
Tannin	Dry, gripping, like over-steeped black tea	Gums, inner cheeks, top of the tongue	Swallow, then run your tongue over your gums: rough and dry means tannin	Protein and fat: steak, lamb, aged cheese
Acidity	Tart and fresh, makes saliva flow	Sides of the tongue	Swallow and lean forward: the more saliva gathers, the higher the acid	Rich, creamy, fried or tomato dishes
Body	Weight and coating, from water to cream	Across the tongue as you swallow	Ask yourself: skimmed milk, whole milk or cream?	A dish of the same weight

Is a Full-Bodied Wine Always High in Tannin?

No. Body is how heavy a wine feels as you swallow; tannin is how much it dries your gums afterwards. The two travel together in reds such as Cabernet Sauvignon, which is why they get confused. Tannin adds to the sense of weight in many reds, yet Viognier can feel full with almost no tannin at all.

Wine	Body	Tannin	What it teaches
Gamay (Beaujolais)	Light	Low	The baseline: little weight, little grip
Pinot Noir	Light to medium	Low	Fine, silky tannin you barely notice
Nebbiolo (Barolo)	Full	High	Pale in the glass yet grips hard: colour does not predict tannin
Viognier or oaked Chardonnay	Full	Very low	Weight from alcohol and oak with no drying at all
Cabernet Sauvignon	Full	High	Both at once, the classic big red

Judge the two in order. As you swallow, rate the weight: skimmed milk, whole milk or cream. That is body. A few seconds later, check your gums. If they feel dry and rough, that is tannin, and it has nothing to do with how heavy the wine felt.

What Are Wine Tannins?

Tannins are polyphenols, plant compounds from grape skins, seeds, stems and oak barrels. They bind to the proteins in your saliva and make them clump, so the mouth loses its slick coating and feels dry. The grip sits on the gums, the inner cheeks and the top of the tongue, and it is strongest in red wine.

What Does Tannin Taste Like?

Strictly, tannin has no taste. "There is no taste bud that detects astringency," as Wine Spectator puts it. Tannin is a touch sensation, the same dry pucker that unripe fruit leaves behind. At high levels some tasters also notice bitterness, often blamed on harsh seed tannin, though the cause is not fully understood. The drying and the bitter sides are easy to mix up, and astringency versus bitterness sets them apart.

Foods High in Tannins

The same grip turns up in the kitchen, so these foods make good practice before you open a bottle:

• Black tea, steeped for five minutes or more. Tea and coffee are the main sources of tannin in most diets.
• Dark chocolate: chocolate liquor, the base of all chocolate, is about 6% tannin.
• Cranberries and blueberries, both berries that carry tannin.
• Walnuts eaten with their thin brown skins on.
• Unripe fruit, such as a green banana, whose dry pucker is the textbook case of astringency.

Where Tannins Come From

Grape skins are the primary source. During maceration the juice sits on the skins. The longer and warmer that contact, the more tannin it pulls out, a choice made at the fermenting tank and traced step by step in how red wine is made. This is why red wines have far more tannins than white wines: red winemaking involves extended skin contact, while white winemaking typically separates the juice from the skins immediately. Some reds stay on their skins for weeks after fermentation, a choice explained in extended maceration wine.

Seeds give harsher, more bitter tannin, so winemakers take care not to crush them. Stems add grip and a herbal edge when whole bunches go into the tank.

Oak barrels are another significant tannin source. Oak tannin feels finer than grape tannin and brings vanilla, spice and toast. New barrels give more of it than used ones.

Tannin Levels and the Words for Them

Grape variety sets the starting level, and several of the noble grapes and beyond are known for it:

• High tannin: Cabernet Sauvignon, Nebbiolo, Tannat, Mourvèdre, Tempranillo, Malbec
• Medium tannin: Merlot, Sangiovese, Syrah/Shiraz, Grenache
• Low tannin: Pinot Noir, Gamay, Barbera

Tasters also describe what the grip feels like:

• Fine or silky: a gentle, velvety coating, typical of good Pinot Noir and aged Merlot.
• Firm: grips without biting, as in young Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo.
• Grippy or chewy: takes hold of gums and cheeks, as in young Barolo and Tannat.
• Rough or harsh: coarse and abrasive, often from over-extraction or underripe grapes.
• Resolved: softened with age until it blends into the rest of the wine.

How Tannins Change with Age

Over years in bottle, tannin molecules join with each other and with colour pigments, a process called polymerization, and some drop out as sediment. The wine feels softer, though scientists still debate exactly why. Barolo, Bordeaux and Brunello di Montalcino are often cellared for years for exactly this reason. As Wine Spectator notes, with age "acidity and tannins move into the background."

Quick check

One question on what you just read

Why do red wines have far more tannin than white wines?

AReds are always aged in oak barrelsBThe juice soaks on the grape skinsCRed grapes hold much more sugar

Tap an answer to see how you did.

Are Tannins Acidic? How Acidity Feels Different

No. Tannins are polyphenols that dry the mouth by binding saliva proteins. Acids such as tartaric and malic do the opposite and make the mouth water, mostly along the sides of the tongue. All wine is acidic, with a pH between 2.9 and 3.9. A wine can be high in acid and low in tannin, like Pinot Noir.

The saliva test tells them apart. After you swallow, a wetter mouth means acidity and a drier, rougher one means tannin. A young Barolo does both at once, with pronounced tannin and acidity, which is why it can feel so intense.

The Acids in Wine

Tartaric acid is the main one and keeps wine chemically stable. It can form tartrates, glittering crystals on a cork or at the bottom of a glass, and they are harmless.

Malic acid is the sharp green-apple acid of cool climates. In malolactic conversion, bacteria turn it into softer lactic acid, the acid of milk, so a Chardonnay that goes through it tastes rounder and creamier. A trace of acetic acid, the acid of vinegar, is in every wine; too much of it is a fault.

What Acidity Does in the Glass

• Freshness and balance: acid is the counterweight to alcohol, sugar and ripe fruit. A wine without enough of it tastes flat, or "flabby".
• Sweetness: high acid makes a wine taste less sweet, so a tart Riesling with some sugar can still taste close to dry.
• Aging: acid acts as a preservative, one reason Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese can age for decades.

Grape and climate set the level:

• High-acid grapes: Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Albariño, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Barbera, Pinot Noir, Gamay
• Medium-acid grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Syrah
• Lower-acid grapes: Viognier, Gewürztraminer, Muscat, Merlot, Grenache, Zinfandel

Cool regions such as Burgundy, the Mosel and Marlborough keep more acidity in their grapes than warm ones such as the Barossa Valley, because heat speeds the breakdown of acid as grapes ripen.

What Is Body in Wine?

Body is the weight and texture of a wine in your mouth, the difference between water and cream. Several things build it at once. Alcohol is a major contributor, and sugar, extract and oak add to it. Tasters rate it on a dairy scale:

• Light-bodied, like skimmed milk: Pinot Grigio, Muscadet, Vinho Verde.
• Medium-bodied, like whole milk: unoaked Chardonnay, Merlot, Chianti.
• Full-bodied, like cream: oaked Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Amarone (what makes a red full-bodied).

Five things add weight:

• Alcohol is thicker than water and warms the throat, so a low-alcohol Moscato d'Asti feels featherlight.
• Residual sugar adds viscosity, so an off-dry Riesling feels rounder than a bone-dry Chablis.
• Extract, the dissolved solids such as glycerol and minerals, is higher in concentrated fruit from low-yielding vines.
• Oak aging adds texture, so an oaked Chardonnay feels fuller than the same wine made in steel.
• Tannin adds to the impression of weight in reds, the reason it gets mistaken for body.

Why Do Tannins Bother Some People?

Mouths differ. Wine Spectator points to real biological differences between tasters, and notes that about one person in four is a so-called supertaster. Young wines also feel harsher than older ones. If tannin feels too rough for you, three changes help:

• Pick low-tannin grapes: Pinot Noir, Gamay and Barbera.
• Choose older vintages, where the tannin has had time to soften.
• Drink it with food: protein and fat take up some of the grip, which is why a tannic Cabernet feels softer next to a steak.

How Tannin, Acidity and Body Balance

A balanced wine is one where no single element dominates. High tannin needs enough fruit and acidity behind it, and full body needs acidity to keep it from feeling heavy. When one part of its structure is out of proportion, the faults are predictable:

• High tannin, low acid, thin fruit: harsh and drying.
• High alcohol, low acid: flabby and hot.
• High acid, little fruit: sharp and austere.

Acidity also makes body feel lighter. A rich Alsace Riesling still feels fresh because its acid lifts the weight, and cool-climate wines often feel lighter on their feet than warm-climate ones at the same alcohol.

The same elements decide how long a wine lasts. Acid, tannin and sugar all preserve it. The longest-lived wines have plenty of at least one: tannic, tart reds like Barolo and Bordeaux, high-acid whites like Riesling and Chenin Blanc, and sweet wines like Sauternes and Tokaji. Light, low-acid, low-tannin wines such as Beaujolais Nouveau are best within a few months.

Matching Structure to Food

Structure explains most of wine and food pairing, and three rules cover most dinners:

• If the wine is tannic, serve protein and fat. Steak, lamb or aged cheese soften the grip, as the tannin rule of wine pairing explains. With delicate white fish the same wine tastes bitter and drying.
• If the dish is rich or tart, pick a high-acid wine. Acid cuts through cream sauce and fried food. A tomato or vinegar dish needs a wine at least as tart, or the wine tastes flat.
• If the dish is heavy, match the body. A ceviche wants a light white such as Muscadet, and a braised short rib wants a full red such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

How to Train Your Palate for Structure

Calibrate each sensation on something familiar, then move to wine. The same three checks slot into the look, smell and taste steps of tasting wine systematically, and the how to taste wine hub collects the drills that build on them.

• Tannin: steep black tea for five minutes and notice the dry gums. Then taste a Cabernet Sauvignon beside a Pinot Noir.
• Acidity: stir lemon juice into water at two strengths and notice the saliva rise. Then compare a Sancerre or dry Riesling with a Viognier.
• Body: sip skimmed milk, whole milk and cream. Then line up a Pinot Grigio, a Merlot and an Amarone.

Score tannin, acidity and body from low to high for every wine and write the scores down. The AI-guided tasting mode in the Sommy app walks you through look, smell and taste after you photograph a label, and saves the notes to a tasting journal. Pour one red tonight and run the two checks after swallowing: a wetter or drier mouth, then the weight of milk or cream.

Sources

1. Wine Spectator: Can you taste tannins?
2. Wine Spectator: Can wine sensitivity improve with age?
3. Wikipedia: Tannin
4. Wikipedia: Astringency
5. Wikipedia: Acids in wine
6. Wikipedia: Phenolic content in wine