Assessing Wine Weight

As a sommelier I will often describe a wine as light, medium, or full bodied. This is in reference to the weight and texture of the wine in your mouth. The weight and body, or viscosity in winespeak, may be attributed to several factors including grape physiology, the winemaking process, tannins, residual sugar, and alcohol by volume (abv). Everyone’s palate is different, subjective, and we perceive wine at varying thresholds.

When sommeliers are blind tasting and objectively assessing wine for faults, we look at the color and intensity of the wine. We also will look at rim variation, to see if there are different “rims” and colors around the edge of the wine in the glass. Next time you’re drinking a glass of wine, look at the color. Can you see through the wine or does it completely block what’s behind it? Is it reflective? How intense in color is it? These are some visual cues sommeliers look for in determining the weight of the wine.

Sommeliers will often swirl the wine and look for tears to form around the outside of the wineglass, more commonly known as the “legs.” This lets us determine how much color and extraction the wine may have, the residual sugar, and most importantly alcohol content. The faster they form and fall, usually the higher the alcohol content. These are several factors in helping to determine the weight of wine from a visual sense.

The following exercise helps us learn to distinguish different wine weights. I take four wine glasses and fill one with skim milk, one with 2% milk, one with whole milk, and the final glass with half and half. I begin by tasting the glass containing the skim milk, letting the milk coat my tongue. I will then repeat the process with each respective glass two to three times. The skim milk represents a glass of wine that is light in body. The half and half represents a wine that is full bodied. The 2% and whole milk represent the spectrum that is in between. This is a great exercise to determine if you like light or full bodied wines, or perhaps both!