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What's your first reaction, as a wine drinker, to the word acidity? Do you pucker and recoil? Or does your mouth water at the thought of a zippy Sancerre or bracing barbera?

You can divide wine lovers, I think, into acid people and flaccid people. (By the pejorative term in the preceding sentence you might guess which side I'm on. To me, wine with barely discernible acidity is a limp handshake.)

Not everyone will fit discretely into either side. It's possible to like Sancerre and sweet port at different times. But for many people there's a tendency to crave the tug of acidity or to go in for softer, smoother wines.

A couple of readers recently commented about what they perceived to be high acidity in a wine I'd recommended from Spain called La Casona ($8.95 in Ontario). I had liked it, and so did a few internationally renowned wine critics. One reader, complaining it wasn't “smooth,” wondered if her bottle might have been tainted.

Certainly, flaws are always a risk. But I'm inclined by her “smooth” remark to suspect she just didn't like it. And that is perfectly fair, a reminder to me that many people are softies rather than acid heads.

But in defence of the winemaker, I feel compelled to say that not all wines are engineered to be smooth. In fact, though it has a euphemistic ring to it, smoothness is considered anathema to many wine drinkers (not to mention hard-core jazz aficionados like me). It's the potable equivalent of Kenny G.

Acid and tang are adored across much of Europe, where traditionally wine is served almost exclusively as a complement to food. Acidity helps stimulate appetite and cleanse the palate. It's one reason wine goes well with grub.

Acid preferences are also to some extent genetically programmed. “Pick a wine – it doesn't matter which – and line up 20 people and there'll be some people who'll probably think it's too acidic and there'll probably be some people who think it's not acidic enough,” says Roger Boulton, a professor of oenology at the University of California, Davis, the premier wine school in the United States. “The variation in our receptors and perception of acidity is quite wide.”

The problem with acidity is not the wide variation in preferences. Some people like Skittles and some Skittles Sour. It's that those preferences can be so hardwired, and that the word acidity has such a negative, “corrosive” connotation, if you will, that some people end up believing high acidity in a wine must be a defect. Unless your wine reeks distinctly of vinegar or nail-polish remover, the acid isn't a defect, it's very likely a matter of design.

In the case of a perfectly natural wine, it's largely a function of climate and harvest date. Grapes on the vine contain a couple of key fruit acids, malic and tartaric, which both have a sour taste. In warmer regions, the vine burns – or “respires” – malic acid, transforming it into water, carbon dioxide and, most important, energy, which the plant uses for other physiological functions. The upshot: In warmer climates such as the valley floor of Australia's Barossa region, acidity in the grapes at harvest is usually pretty low , leading to softer, smoother, subtly sweeter wines.

Fair to say there's been a general trend over the past couple of decades toward soft and cuddly wines. Partly this was because of the rise of warm-climate wine regions in the New World such as Barossa, California's Napa Valley and much of Chile. It's also a conscious stylistic shift prompted by the emergence of new wine consumers and wine critics who, for good or bad, tend to judge wines in the absence of food.

I'm oversimplifying, to be sure. The point of delayed harvesting isn't simply, or even mainly, to reduce acid. There are other clear advantages to picking late. As grapes ripen more fully, their skins and seeds become physiologically more mature and less astringent, resulting in wine with generally more pleasing and complex flavours.

In chemistry-speak, there's been a drive toward higher pH – and as you may recall from high school, the higher the pH, the lower the acidity. “Bordeaux would have had [an average] pH of 3.3 to 3.4, 30 or 40 years ago, and those numbers are up in the high 4s now,” Prof. Boulton says.

In fact, in many cases, the collateral drop in acidity as winemakers chase greater ripeness is often more extreme than even the acid averse would like. To liven up their juice, winemakers the world over are increasingly reintroducing acidity in a process called acidulation. Yes, it's perfectly legal in most regions. But as with many tools in the winemaker's kit, it's got its share of critics.

I find the acidulation debate amusing more than anything else. In the vast majority of cases, the acid reintroduced in acidulation is tartaric, derived naturally from grapes. Unless the formulation is of a poor, non-commercial grade or has been somehow corrupted, there is no way to distinguish added acid from natural acid. “I don't know anybody that can taste added acid,” Prof. Boulton says.

This doesn't stop annoying, self-appointed tartaric police at your dinner parties (or at least mine) from proclaiming that every Australian wine you serve them has obviously and inappropriately been doctored with acid. Fact is, many Australian wines, particularly finer ones, are grown in relatively cool microclimates that imbue them with sufficient natural acidity. And many European wines from hot climates are regularly acidulated.

Acidulation is “very regionally based,” says Matthew Lane, wine education director for Foster's Group, Americas. “You can't say Australia or California wineries acidulate. That's ridiculous. In the Adelaide Hills [of Australia], a cool climate area, they wouldn't acidulate.”

Of course, the question for wine romantics is, Whether or not a consumer can detect it, is it “right” to add acid, period? I suppose the politically correct drinkers had better not sprinkle salt on their heirloom tomatoes, either, or make sausages with added spice. And they'd better not drink those elite German rieslings that have (legally) been spiked with unfermented grape juice to counterbalance the wine's harsh, marginal-climate acidity.

I think at this level it's an abstract issue that's more fitting for philosophers than sommeliers. I can almost hear Plato:

“Tell me, Socrates, the man who drinketh shiraz from the Valley of Barossa pressed from grapes grown in a sweltering year – be he not a drinker of true wine?”

“No, for he hath imbibed the acid of tartar, that hemlock-like substance reviled by poseur wine snobs. In such vino there can be no veritas.”

What I can conclude unequivocally about such “manipulated” wines is that they generally taste better than they would otherwise. And some taste really good. Unless, of course, you don't care for acidity. In which case, stay away from most $9 Spanish reds, too.