I keep reading about soft tannins, or pleasant tannins, or lots of tannin. My question is simple: What are tannins?
Tannins are substances that get into the wine from the grape skins and seeds. They can be bitter and can add rough texture to a wine–think of overbrewed tea, which has lots of tannin in it–but they benefit wine, too, by preserving it from early oxidation. Good winegrowers know how to manage the tannins in the vineyard and the winery to strike the right balance, so that a wine has a pleasant velvety, soft texture, instead of being too rough. As wine ages in the bottle, some but not all of the tannin will drop out of solution and form sediment.
