BODY in a Wine by Catherine Bugue, Director of Education – WSET-Certified, D.W.S., IWP

Let’s talk body. When it comes to wine, BODY is a structural characteristic - along with sweetness, acidity, tannin, and alcohol - which, when added to color and aromas and flavors, help define a wine’s style. Since wine enthusiasts enjoy talking about the wine styles they love, body often makes its way into the conversation, i.e. “I love a full bodied Cabernet Sauvignon!” Many wine education programs, such as the WSET, also ask students to assess the body of a wine, so it can be the subject of much dissection.

The body of a wine is a textural sensation - how the wine feels in your mouth. I liken body in a wine to the weight of the wine, specifically on the tongue. How heavy does it sit there? Take a sip of wine and let the wine sit on your tongue. Does it feel weighty/heavy, or light and airy? 

If you are not used to assessing body in a wine, it may help to think about the weight of another beverage you are familiar with. One common analogy is milk and the different weights of milk styles, such as: 2% as lighter bodied; whole milk as medium bodied; and Half & Half as full-bodied. A 2% milk feels lighter on your tongue than either the whole milk or the Half & Half. The latter will be weightier or more rich, another term that is used in connection with wines with more body. 

But the milk styles you choose can be flexible (i.e. skim milk as the lightest, whole as medium and cream as full bodied) depending on the milk styles you are familiar with. And if you don’t drink milk, no problem! You can use juice instead, i.e. grapefruit juice as light bodied, apple juice for medium bodied, and mango nectar for full-bodied, as just one example. Next time you are drinking any kind of beverage, think of how light or heavy it sits on your tongue. Don’t worry about looking silly as you sit there contemplating, your jaw slack with wine. We wine folk can be found sniffing around fruits at a grocery store to build up our aroma descriptor library, and I know at least one person who licked rocks to try and sense the controversial ‘minerality’ descriptor (no, not recommended.)

While I concentrate on the weight of the wine in my mouth, you can also consider the movement or flow of the wine in the mouth as an indicator of body. If the wine flows slowly across your palate like a rich wave after a sip, almost feeling like it is leaving a coating, there is more weight or body to the wine. If instead the wine moves quickly around the palate and you don’t feel any weight or richness or coating in your mouth, it is lighter in body.  

WHY do different wines have different body levels anyway? There can be several factors. One key factor is alcohol, which is viscous, meaning it has a thicker consistency. This adds weight, or body, to a wine. Therefore, wines higher in alcohol will be fuller in body. Those lighter in alcohol will feel lighter, or thinner (another term used by wine folks to describe lighter bodied wines) in the mouth. 

Sweetness in wine affects the body as well. The sugar in a sweet wine will feel heavier on the palate than a dry wine from the same grape variety. 

The grape variety itself is a factor. Some grape varieties, like Gewurztraminer and Grenache, build up more sugars as they grow on the vine, and with higher sugars in the grapes to turn into higher alcohol, there is the potential for more body in the final wines.  

Tannins and wood barrels (fermenting or aging wines in wood) can also add body to a wine. Each has what is called phenolic compounds (also found in grape skins, seeds and stems) which interact with proteins in our mouths and create a sense of viscosity (that thicker consistency discussed above.)

As with so many things in wine, you can jump down a deep rabbit hole when it comes to the body of a wine, considering glycerin, dry extract, and winemaking practices that add a richer, creamier feel such as malolactic conversion and lees stirring. For those who want to jump, I’m sure you’ll bump into lots of Napa Valley Wine students and educators on the journey, either through our courses, NVWA Membership and/or our TasteCoach platform; be sure to say hello.