Tension

Last week on the Karen MacNeil Facebook page, Edward S asked what is meant by “tension” in a wine. Here goes: tension is the sense in a wine that there are two opposing forces that create a kind of dynamic energy. For example, when those entities are fruit and acid, you might have a wine that walks a tightrope between richness (fruit) and freshness (acid). Tension can give wine a kind of “aliveness”.

California makes Port.

Answer: False.

False. True Port is a sweet fortified wine that must come from the Douro Valley of northern Portugal, in the same way that true Champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France. The Ports produced in the Douro are majestic-deep, complex, rich, thick, and thoroughly hedonistic-and considered among the most sophisticated wines in the world. In California, sweet fortified wines are made, but they aren’t Port. Confusingly, many of these wines used to be called “Port,” and some still are, despite the fact that in 2006, the United States Tax and Trade Bureau recognized the international agreement prohibiting domestic producers from using the generic terms “Port” or “Port-style” on fortified wine labels.

“As surprising as it may seem, wines are like fabrics with multiple and diverse physical aspects that may be pleasant or horrifying. There are smooth wines and rough wines, supple wines and stiff wines, harsh wines and velvety wines. As with fabrics, these impressions stem from their physical constitution.”

—Pierre Poupon,
French wine writer, in his book Plaisirs de la Dégustation

Tension

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