TN: Trinch

Hmmmm, I'm a bad person to answer this, as I am just a guy who reports what he tastes, not a chemist like Dr. Lipton or a professional wine guy like Herr Pronay. Still, that never shut me up before.

First of all, in this case, to clarify there was a needlely acidity and slight petillance to this wine that made me fear a secondary fermentation in bottle (a flaw). But it settled down quickly.

As to acidity in wine, it takes different forms (and others will know more about tartaric v. malic v. lactic, etc.). But it's not something I think of as similar to alcohol. Acidity adds zip and vibrancy to wine, if a wine is actually caustic it's WAY overacidic in my mind.

It's really hard to talk analytically about what you taste. But I'd say that high alochol and high acidity are infrequent companions. The riper a grape gets, the less acidic as a rule (and higher potential alcohol).

I don't know how to suggest "tasting" acidity. White wines tend to have more acids than reds, cool climates have more than warm climate reds. A good test might be comparing many 2002 European wines with their 2003 counterparts (or 1996 CalCabs with their '97 counterparts).

Alcohol's easier to pinpoint. I think alcohol has a distinct aroma- sniff a bottle of vodka, a scotch, and a rum- that common denominator is it.