Tension in Wine

There’s a point where a wine is balanced so perfectly it becomes sublime. Slightly higher alcohol, a touch more acidity, a bit less tannin, or just a little sweeter, and the wine would go from great to good. This quality is called tension, which is challenging to convey fully with writing (or at least for this writer), but you’ll know it when you experience it. You may have had one of these wines. You might not have known it at the time and you probably didn’t call it tension, but you knew the wine was special. The best analogy is pouring a glass of water until the meniscus looks like the glass should overflow, but doesn’t. That surface tension in the water is what’s going on invisibly in the wine. These are the wines that make people change careers.