What Are the Tannins Present in Italian Wine?

“I can really taste the tannins in this wine…”

How many times have you heard somebody say something like that and wondered what so many of us have wondered?

What on Earth are tannins?

It’s an important question because many Italian wine companies (and reviewers/experts) will talk about the tannins in a wine as though that is a term that we should automatically understand. However, for somebody who is not familiar with the jargon associated with Italian wine, tannins can end up being one of those confusing terms that’s supposed to say a lot but doesn’t really reveal much of anything to us.

So, let’s unravel the mystery.

In this article, we’re going to explore what tannins are and the role they play in the composition of an Italian wine. By the end, you should hopefully be capable of identifying the tannins in your wine yourself, as well as being able to understand how they contribute to the overall balance that the wine achieves.

What Are Tannins?

Tannins is the word we use to describe a specific chemical compound that is found throughout nature, particularly in plant life. It is tannins that lend many plants their more bitter qualities.

There is an evolutionary reason for this.

Plants develop tannins to make themselves as bitter as they possibly can. In doing so, they change their natural taste to ward off animals that would otherwise eat them. The idea is to give the animal the same reaction that you have when you put something you don’t like in your mouth.

You chew a little…

You say “ew”…

Then you force the morsel down and tell yourself that you’re never going to eat whatever you’ve just eaten again.

The same is supposed to happen when animals eat a plant that’s rife with tannins. And the ultimate goal is to protect the plant and its seeds or fruit. This allows the seeds or fruit to achieve full ripeness, ensuring the plant successfully spreads itself.

However, some plants just can’t quite seem to get tannins right. In fact, there are many plants that humans, in particular, enjoy for their bitter qualities. For example, tea and coffee are both drinks that are heavy in tannins, making them naturally quite bitter. Some people enjoy these bitter tastes for what they are. Others add a little sugar or a drop of milk to the drink to balance against the tannins, making their morning shot of caffeine more palatable.

Of course, being plants, vines will also produce tannins to protect their grapes. But much as we see with coffee and tea, the bitterness can actually be an important part of the Italian wine experience.

Where Do a Grape’s Tannins Come From?

This is an important question to ask in terms of Italian wine production.

There are typically three parts of the grape that produce tannins:

• Pips
• Stem
• Skin

On top of that, a producer that uses wood barrels will also add a tannic quality to their wines because of the wood. So, there are a lot of tannins getting managed during the production of bottles of Italian wine. The key for a producer is to finely balance the presence of these tannins against the other qualities of the wine, which allows for bitter notes to come through without making them so powerful that they dominate the tasting experience.

Generally speaking, tannins are what end up giving the wine its weight and structure. They’re responsible for how the wine “feels” when it’s in your mouth. A wine that feels weighty and complex will likely have a heavy tannic quality. By contrast, something that feels light and breezy will usually have low levels of tannins.

This is a particularly important contrast when it comes to the different types of Italian wines.

How Do Tannins Vary Depending on Wine Type?

If you’ve experimented with both white and red wines, you will know that red wines tend to feel heavier and more complex in your mouth.

Again, we can point to tannins as the reason for this.

When a winemaker produces a white wine, they press the grapes as soon as they reach the winery. They also remove many of the aspects of the grape that lead to the development of tannins, such as the stem and pips. This leaves just the skin (and potentially the barrel) to lend tannins to the wine. The result is a wine that feels lighter and tastes more refreshing and fruitier when consumed.

Red wines are made using the entire grape, which means they are almost always heavier in tannins than white wines. These tannins are partly responsible for a red wine’s deeper colouration. They’re also responsible for the dry taste you may get in your mouth after drinking red wine.

How Do Tannins Affect Wine Quality?

It all comes down to texture and how the wine feels when you’re drinking it.

We’ve mentioned balance several times in this article and it’s in a lack of balance where you’ll see the effect of an overabundance of tannins. If the bitter taste in your wine is noticeable to the point of being unpleasant, this means the wine’s tannic qualities are out of balance with its other qualities, leading to a bad drinking experience. Many experts will call a wine like this “green”, which suggests that the wine could benefit from ageing.

And this may be the case.

The longer tannin compounds are in a wine, the more time they have to form larger compound chains called polymers.

Many theorise that these polymers are responsible for giving a red wine its softer feel in the mouth, which is why winemakers often recommend allowing their wines to age. So, tannins seem to play an important role in the ageing process in terms of helping the wine to achieve its balance.

As a general rule, red wines will always be more tannic than white. Even the white wines that do have tannins will not have them to any heavy extent. But to keep everything simple, you can just think of tannins as the compounds that lend your Italian wine its bitter notes, for better or for worse.