The Quixotic Pursuit of Balance

We all lose our balance sense from time to time, wine communicators maybe more often than others. Of all the major wine quality factors—such concepts as Purity (the relative lack of wine faults), Intensity, Complexity, and Length of Finish—it’s Balance that’s always the poster child for one-style factions. It stands to reason. I mean, who’s going to argue against balance? From the time we begin our wine educations, it’s drummed into our heads that balance is the fulcrum of wine quality. In reality, as we develop confidence in our own tastes, the pursuit of perfectly balanced wines becomes less important than following our occasional moods and cravings for wines that are a little (or a lot) off-center, and this fight against unbalanced wines begins to seem more like jousting windmills.

Recognizing balance in wines is critical to the understanding of how most wine experts partly assess wine quality and rate wines. The term refers to a wine’s components all existing in harmonious proportions that complement one another so that no single aspect dominates.

These wine components include:

• Sweetness (sugars), if present
• Acidity
• Body
• Grape derived aromas/flavors
• Tannins, which mainly come from grape skins but can also come from stems, and oak barrels, staves or chips or can simply be added tannins
• Alcohol
• Winemaking derived aromas/flavors, e.g. characters coming from yeast(s), MLF, lees, oak, sulfur dioxide (SO2), etc.
• Winemaking Gray-Area “Faults”: volatile acidity, reduction/sulfides, Brettanomyces, oxidation, etc.

The “In Pursuit of Balance” movement that started in 2011 (and disbanded five years later) gathered a collection of California wineries largely seeking to persuade consumers over to wines that adhered to their ideology, which tended to be lighter-bodied, lower alcohol styles made from cooler climates and/or earlier harvesting. Flawed though the assertion may have been that lighter, leaner styles are somehow automatically better balanced than more concentrated, fuller-bodied ones, old habits die hard. Today there are still wine communicators who trot out balance as a justification for their waif-like fashion preferences, but doing so is often misleading and could be turning drinkers away from wine.

To be clear, balance is not a fashion or style; it is relative state of being. Therefore, there are well-balanced wines that exist for almost every style. This includes rich, full-bodied styles with relatively high alcohol (e.g. 15%+ ABV), so long as the other components match. If, for example, a 16% ABV wine has a lot of fruit layers and a solid backbone of firm, ripe tannins, plenty of acidity, and well-knit winemaking components, etc., which all synergize with the level of alcohol, then the alcohol is unlikely to poke out. In other words, if the alcohol is well-matched by the other components, there shouldn’t be a sensation of “alcoholic burn” on the finish. Conversely, I’ve experienced alcohol burn on the finish of chaptalized 12.5% Burgundy wines, which simply didn’t have the fruit nor structure to match even this modest amount of alcohol, and so the finish was dominated by the alcohol.

When applied accurately and consistently, judging a wine as balanced can offer a useful guidepost for those wine lovers seeking a harmonious drinking experience. Therefore, flagging a wine’s relative state of balance is sometimes an important indicator of the level of wine enjoyment. I say “sometimes” because there are occasions wine drinkers prefer wines that aren’t all that balanced, and that’s OK too.

Hold on—can unbalanced wines actually be preferrable? Absolutely! Consciously or unconsciously, everyone has likely been in a situation when they have preferred an off-balance style. I went through a phase of being an acid freak and still sometimes crave wines where the acid is eye-wateringly over-the-top. Think Clare Valley Riesling, Hunter Valley Sémillon, and Brut Nature (zero dosage) style Champagnes. Conversely, a friend visited the other day and told me he prefers lower acid red wines, so I gladly found him a suitable Chateauneuf du Pape from my cellar and loved drinking it with him. I confess to adore Chardonnays with overt sulfides notes (that struck match/flint character as a result of winemaking choices). Some days I’m in the mood for tannic wines with a firm finish—even a young, slightly under-ripe, rather chewy Cabernet Sauvignon that I might take down a point or two when scoring. On Occasion, I love fruit bombs, other times I want thin, scantly flavored delicacies. The thing is, I know when the wine I’m choosing to drink isn’t all that balanced, and I don’t care.

Perfectly balanced wines are not what every wine drinker wants, at least not all the time. The problem for score chasers is that off-kilter wines lose points for being so, and those who purchase the highest scoring wine to get the “best” wine experience, may not be getting the best experience for their palate or mood.

This brings us to the elephant in the windmill: professional quality judgements and scores are not designed to judge for individual taste. That’s why an accurate description of the wine is far more useful than the score.

Balance is an important wine quality maker to understand, but it is equally important to be able to disregard it on occasion and follow your mood. Sometimes you want rhubarb pie, other times death-by-chocolate, but if desserts were rated like wines, neither one of these could be judged as particularly well-balanced. There is no shame in preferring a lower-scoring, less-than-balanced wine. If you love a wine style and someone tries to balance-shame you into not drinking it, their advice is not for you. Your taste is anatomically and decisively individual. The only wine communicator of value to you—be they a sommelier, wine critic, author, or educator—is someone who appreciates and nurtures a whole spectrum of wine palates rather than trying to persuade consumers over to their preferences or modern trends. And while not-so-balanced wines might not get the highest scores, they might be the taste experience perfectly right for you.