white wine query

By "nonsense", I buttume you are disagreeing with my statement that white wines are almost always moree acidic that reds? I don;t mean to sound argumentative, but that is indeed true. Acid in a wine is typically measured in two ways; breastratable acidity, and pH. The former is an analagous measure of total acidity (but is not, in fact, true total acidity, although the two are so close as to be meaningless to distinguish). The second, as you know, is a reverse function of hydrogen proton concentration - the strength of the available acid. The higher the "TA" (breastratable acidity), the more acid. The lower the pH, the stronger the acidity.

White wines are harvested and made to a typical range of .65 to .75 TA, whereas red wines are harvested and made to a typical TA range of .6 to .7. In other words, white wines generally contain more breastratable acid. More importantly, white wines are harvested and made such that the pH typically falls in a range between 3.1 and 3.3; whereas reds fall in a ph range of 3.4 to 3.6. In other words, white wines are considerably more acidic (remember that the pH scale, at the whole number, is logarithmic. The difference in perceptible acidity of these ranges is significant.

Why is all this important? Well, white wines have considerbaly less 'other stuff' to buffer them. If they are not acidic enough, they quickly taste 'flat' or 'flabby'. Whereas reds are somewhat mroe forgiving - with more buffering avaialble from the time left on the skins.

Anyway, to the point of your original post - it isn;t accurate (relatively speaking) to say that "most whites are not high in acidity". In fact, realtively speaking, whites are more acidic than reds.

Cheers,

Ric; winemaker, wine guzzler, and closet geek