We’ve all heard wine people describe wines saying, “Oh this is light-bodied,” or “This wine is heavy,” but what does it all mean. What they are describing is wine body. Unfortunately, most experts chock it up to the alcohol content in the wine and leave it at that. Well, that’ll leave you scratching your head if you’re got a 14% ABV wine that feels medium-bodied at best. Well that’s because they are leaving out 5 other contributing factors that give wine its body.
What is Wine Body?
If you’re new around here, you may not know that I own and operate a wine tour company in Chania, Crete. On our tours, we teach our guests how to taste wine. Identifying wine body is always the trickiest wine characteristic because it’s not quantifiable or definitive. After teaching thousands of people how to taste, I’ve figured out the best ways to help my guests understand wine body.
Wine body is the thickness or thinness of a wine. The body in wine is determined by several factors; alcohol content, sugar, glycerin, oak-ageing, tannins, and the grape variety. All of these elements give wine more viscosity. Viscosity is a measure of a fluid’s resistance to flow; so how fast or slow wine moves around our mouths.
Winemaking and grape growing decisions also greatly affect wine body. More on that later.
Disclaimer Before We Move On!
The body of a wine does not determine quality. A wine does not need to be full-bodied to be great. There was a trend of wine writers where all their high ratings went to big, bold, heavy, over-extracted wines. This was simply their preference. Unfortunately it set the tone for winemakers to strive to make all their wines full-bodied. It was a homogenous mess. Thankfully the trends are turning to more elegant wines. Either way, wine body is a preference, not an indication of quality.
How to Detect Body in Wine
How rich or how watery a wine FEELS in our mouths will help up determine wine body. A full-bodied wine will coat your mouth and move around your mouth slowly. It will feel thicker and heavier. A light-bodied wine will move around your mouth quickly and not leave a coating. It will feel weightless.
I go over this extensively in my Online Wine Tasting Course if you want a deep-dive to better understanding wine.
Many use the milk comparison to detect body in wine. A light body wine will feel like skim or 0% milk, medium body is compared to 1-2% milk, and full bodied wines are compared to full-fat milk or cream. Now that’s a useful tool if you’ve drank milk in the last 20 years which many adults have not. This is especially unhelpful if your don’t come from a milk-drinking culture.
The coating and the texture are more universally understood, I believe. Light body is like a cotton sheet on your tongue and a full body wine is like a velvet blanket.
If you’re having a hard time detecting body in wine, take a good sip of your wine, with your mouth closed, tip your head forward and flick the wine with your tongue. If your tongue moves through the wine quickly, it’s light, if it moves through the liquid with some resistance, then it’s full.
Viscosity in Wine
I’ll be honest, science was never my strongest subject. Had my teachers broken down different science lessons into how they affect wine, maybe I’d be much better at it. I found this great science project report online, honestly, I think it’s from a middle schooler, but it perfectly illustrates how alcohol, sugar, and glycerin add to viscosity. Here alcohol can be represented by hand sanitizer, sugar can be represented by syrup and honey, and glycerin is well, glycerin. All of these take much longer to travel, or are more viscous, than water.
How Alcohol Affects Wine Body
Alcohol adds viscosity to a wine. The higher the alcohol the more viscous a wine is. The more viscous a wine is the slower it moves. We see this when we swirl our glass and watch the legs/tears of wine drip down the sides. The more alcohol there is, the slower the wine will move.
However, this does not always translate to a fuller-bodied wine.
I live on a hot Mediterranean island. The wines here are always going to be high in alcohol, as are most warm climate wines. (More sunshine= riper grapes= more grape sugar= more alcohol). It would be absurd to think that all the wines of Crete are therefore full-bodied. You’d laugh hysterically if you tried our two most famous red grape varieties, Liatiko and Kotsifali, and determined they were full-bodied solely on their alcohol content. Spoiler alert! They’re both light bodied.
Alcohol is merely one factor that adds to wine body.
How Sugar Adds Body to Wine
Similarly to alcohol, sugar adds body to wine by making the liquid more viscous. A lot of dessert wines are considered full body because they are high in alcohol and high in sugar. Sweeter wines will coat your mouth and leave a film.
There’s quite a few wines circulating that have added sugars in order to make it fuller bodied and more appealing to a mass market. Apothic Red is a good example with over 16 grams of sugar! Compare this to 1 or 2 grams found in most dry wines.
Glycerol/Glycerin in Wine
Now, don’t freak out because this is a wine word you haven’t seen before. Glycerol is a natural byproduct of fermentation. Glycerol can make up about 1% of the final composition of wine. Glycerol is also present in a lot of grape varieties. Glycerol is odor-less but has a syrupy texture. This adds fullness and a slight sweetness to wines. A winemaker may choose a yeast strain known to produce more glycerol to make their wines more full-bodied.
Oak-ageing Adds Body to Wine
I’ve written extensively on how oak adds aromas and flavors to wine, but not about how oak-ageing adds body to wine. The main way oak adds body to wine is because oak offers the optimal condition for malolactic fermentation to occur. Essentially during this process, malic acid is converted to lactic acid and gives wine a creamier texture. Oak-ageing also adds tannins to wine.
Wine Body: Tannins
Tannins add complexity to wine. This higher concentration of flavor does give the feeling of fuller-body. It is the least reliable measure of wine body in my opinion. I include it here because you’ll see snippets of tannins adding body to wine and I just want to set the record straight. As wine ages, tannins disappear so does wine get less full-bodied? Yeah, don’t think so.
Red Grape Varieties that are More Full-Bodied
These red wines tend to be full bodied are:
Cabernet Sauvignon
Malbec
Zinfandel
Syrah/Shiraz
Tannat
Mourvedre/Monastrell
Red Grape Varieties that are Medium-Bodied
Merlot
Tempranillo
Sangiovese
Nebbiolo
Xinomavro
GSM
Cabernet Franc
Light Bodied Red Wines
Pinot Noir
Grenache
Gamay
Cinsault
Liatiko
Zweigelt
What about white wine?
The thing with body with white wine is so much of it is determined by oak-ageing and malolactic fermentation. The most common full-bodied white wine would be California-style Chardonnay. It’s aged in oak and goes through malolactic fermentation. Chardonnay on it’s own, is much much lighter. Alcohol doesn’t play as crucial a role in body for white wine, except at the extremes. A 9% ABV Vinho Verde is as light as it gets. Very few white grapes on their own pass the medium-body threshold without the use of oak or MLF. Marsanne, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Viognier do sometimes. Notice their all from the Rhone Valley which is a very warm region.
How to Describe a Full-Bodied Wine
These descriptions for full-bodied red wine will help you communicate what you like about the wine.
Heavy
Bold
Weighty
Thick
Creamy
How to Describe a Light-Bodied Wine
Elegant
Lean
Delicate
Subtle
Wine Body Conclusion
I hope this clarifies any questions you had about body in wine. I know it’s a bit confusing, especially since a number can’t be assigned to measure it. Let us know if you have any more questions about wine body in the comments.