Wine · Terminology

Flabby

A wine that lacks the acidity to hold itself up — soft, dull and short on the finish.

Flabby is the tasting term for a wine that lacks acidity — one that tastes soft, broad and dull, with nothing holding it together. The fruit may be perfectly ripe, but without acid the wine feels heavy in the mouth and dies quickly on the finish. Tasters also reach for flat, soft, fat or unbalanced.

The usual cause is heat. Grapes lose their malic acid as they ripen in warm conditions, so fruit picked late in a hot vintage, or grown in a climate that never cools at night, arrives in the winery already short of acid.

In practice

  • Picking too late is the most common trigger — sugar climbs while acid falls.
  • Malolactic conversion softens acidity further, so it is often blocked in warm-climate whites for exactly this reason.
  • Winemakers in hot regions may acidify the must with tartaric acid — legal in Australia, California, Argentina and much of the New World.
  • Flabbiness is a balance problem, so it also shows up when alcohol or residual sugar is too high for the acid present.

Where you'll meet it

  • Cheap warm-climate whites, especially over-ripe Chardonnay.
  • Wines from very hot vintages in normally moderate regions.
  • The opposite fault sits at the other end: a wine so acidic it is described as green, tart or hollow.

Diagnosing it properly

Flabby is a judgement about balance, not a measurement. Before using the word, check:

  • Does the mouth water after swallowing? If not, acidity is genuinely low.
  • Is the finish short? Flabby wines fade almost immediately.
  • Is anything else out of proportion? High alcohol or sugar can make normal acidity read as flabby — the fix there is different.

Serving temperature matters too: a white served too warm will taste flabbier than the same bottle at 8–10 °C. Chill it and taste again before condemning it.

The exam angle

In a written note, don't just write "flabby" — say "low acidity" and let the conclusion follow. Quality assessments want the evidence and the judgement kept apart: "low acidity, short finish, therefore unbalanced and of acceptable quality at best."

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