01/10/07 Body

Welcome to Vine to Wine! This is your host Linda Moran and today we are continuing our series exploring the basics of tasting and understanding wine. Today we will address the impact that texture has on our ability to describe a wine accurately. As we discussed yesterday, your ability to taste is most influenced by your sense of smell. Your taste buds are not the primary influence upon tasting. However, once in the mouth there is an important distinction made and that is to determine the body of the wine. Body is the term used to describe the texture of the wine. It references a wine's viscosity. It has nothing to do with the flavor or intensity of the wine. Body is all about mouthfeel. We refer to the wine as having light medium or full body to describe its texture. An analogy is to think of how nonfat milk, whole milk and heavy ceam differ in viscosity. The nonfat is rather light and watery where the whole milk is a bit thicker and the cream is thick and actually clings to your palate after you swallow it. Remember light medium or full body isn't about the intensity level of the flavors. So think mouth feel and texture when you are examining the wine's body, and make the determination as to weather it is light medium or full bodied. Remember to send your wine questions and ideas for new topics to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thanks for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.