Mouth Balance

The sum of tastes is described in a term called “mouth-feel” although a better term might be mouth balance. This is different from the tastes of acid, bitter, salty, sweet, and savory that we usually attribute to tongue and inside the mouth perception. Mouth balance describes the interacting sensations of acidity, sweetness, bitterness, flavor, viscosity, heat (temperature), warmth (from spicy pepper), and astringency (from tannins and polyphenols). These interactions result in what is called “balance”. The stimuli are often divided into producing “hard” or “soft” mouth balance.

For example, sweetness, savory, warm (temperature), viscous, low alcohol, and fat in foods, would all be described as producing a “soft” mouth-feel. Either wine or foods that are high in acid, salt, tannins, alcohol, hot pepper spiciness, or bitterness would produce a “hard” mouth-feel. 

In general, most people prefer a balanced mouth-feel, most of the time. They prefer equal amounts of hard and soft: acids plus sweetness; tannins plus fat or savory; spicy or bitterness with some sweetness, etc. In technical terms, the sweet elements of a wine (derived from alcohol and sugars) must be in relative balance with the sum of the acidic elements plus the phenolic elements (astringency and bitterness).

A good way to look at it I guess!