Astringent

Astringent describes the rough, puckering sensation you can feel in your mouth when you drink a wine with a lot of tannin. Tannin is a natural substance found especially in the skins, seeds and stems of the grapes, and it ends up in the wine during pressing, fermentation and ageing. It is first and foremost in powerful red wines that you encounter this quality, and it does not sit in the taste like sweetness or acidity, but is a feeling, a kind of dryness and tightness that spreads across the tongue, gums and the inside of the cheeks.

Astringency is worth paying attention to, because it shapes whether a wine comes across as soft or firm, and because it governs what the wine pairs well with. The sensation becomes clearer the more tannin the wine has, and the colder you serve it. On the other hand, it is softened by fatty, protein-rich dishes, for example a juicy steak or braised meat, where the fat smooths out the tannins and makes the mouth feel more harmonious. Ageing and time in the bottle also soften the tannins, so older red wines often seem less astringent than young ones.

A classic misunderstanding is to confuse astringency with bitterness or acidity. Bitterness is a taste, acidity gives freshness and makes you salivate, while astringency is a pure tactile sensation of roughness. Try to notice whether your mouth feels dry and tight afterwards, and then you have caught it.